Hidden

by Batya Casper

Hidden is told in two parts. It is told backward. The first half opens on a small Israeli village during the second half of the 1960s; the second half starts in Jerusalem in the 1930s. The story opens with an old man falling down the stairs like a bird from the sky, and a stranger in a yellow dress, purple jacket and boots opening the front door claiming to be "next of kin." It is about a young woman who, for 10 years, refuses to come out of her room; about a vagrant who roams the streets at night mumbling to herself, tending to broken birds and stray cats; about an older woman who sleeps her life away in her living-room chair; a man who nurses a pain in his chest as he struggles to mend the lives of those around him; and a girl who grows up in a family of old people-grandparents who refuse to tell her who she is, who her parents were, what they looked like, or why they didn't care enough to "stick around and watch me grow." Hanover Gardens, is set in Manchester, England, a wartime city of women, children, and old men. It is the story of two German Jewish girls wrenched from their parents and their separate hiding places and sent to Britain during WW II. Unlike the vagrant they call "little lost boy," who is never seen after the blitz, the sisters huddle underground with the members of their host household as the bombs screech above them, and the city of their refuge is blitzed "to hell and back." The sisters spend their formative years struggling against the gratitude and resentment they feel for the mother and children who have taken them in, and for the other annoying refugees who clutter up the house. All the residents of this home are wrestling with the guilt of their survival, each in his/her own way, with their fears for the parents or children they have left behind, and the prayers they mutter in the dark for their wellbeing. It is a coming of age story of the refugee girls and their British counterparts, all battling their demons, waiting for the war to end, learning to take action, to stand up and be counted--while always, always, waiting to see who will survive and come to get them.

278 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2015

Reviews

[Regge Episale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is two books in one, telling the stories of the suffering, kindness, and sacrifice of people before, during, and after war.
Story I, Hidden, is a mystery. Who is the woman hidden upstairs? Why is she there. It brings the reader into the lives of a Jewish family in Isreal and the bitter cost of war: their love, their loss, their secrets, their guilt. You don't want it to end.

The second story is Hanover Gardens: War from the perspective of children who are sent to England for safety during WWII. War isn't about politics from a child's point of view. It's about fear of death, of abandonment, of not being loved, wanted, or safe. Children who are hidden from the Nazi machine of Germany are again hidden in the basements of England was bombs explode over their heads. And it is a story of joy. Of relief. It is a story of the generosity of English families who took in frightened, confused, stranger-children and kept them safe for their families. And there is the effect of all of this and how the children see it. "There were days like that, when Auntie Indie (she has a house full of children she cares for while her husband is at war) twirled around in a fog of her own, inventing songs, bursting into scary laughter, engaging in angry, whispered accusations against her husband's empty chair, then stamping her feet and turning it for punishment to face the wall, oblivious of everything around her.

It is a story of sorrow, triumph, and love in that lyrical voice of Batya Casper that brings experience up close and personal.

[Leeann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Forgettable.