What do you think?
Rate this book
The Master Planets
In the summer of 1973, Peter Jameson is poised to take his band The Master Planets straight to the top of the charts. His ambitious plans are shattered when his mother's body is found floating in the river, an apparent suicide. When the media speculate that she is responsible for the murder of an elderly German farmer, Peter is caught in a web of intrigue involving Nazi war criminals and his mother's ruthless past as a Polish partisan. Suddenly, past collides with present, truth with falsehood, reality with illusion, and Peter abandons his musical aspirations. Five decades of deceit and betrayal converge in this thrilling mediation on the ultimate cost of violence and revenge.
323 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 15, 2008
'Families, like countries, tell myths about themselves'
THE MASTER PLANETS may seem at first like two books compressed into one: a fascinating story about the formation by a dedicated small New Jersey group of boys of a rock and roll band called 'The Master Planets', and an intricately detailed mystery thriller about the lives of a courageous few surviving the purge of Jews in WW II. The intelligent choice of the title of this very brilliant novel by Donald Gallinger unfolds like a slow blooming flower as the reader gradually learns the complexities of the multifaceted plot. This is a book of importance by a master storyteller.
'When you've lost your life, you sometimes think other people know where it went. That's a mistake.' And with this early terse statement from the mother (a Polish Jew nurtured back to health in a WW II concentration camp by an American doctor who eventually married her and brought her to the United States) to her physician daughter Penny and her musically gifted son Peter, the inherent mystery of this story begins. The Jamesons are an odd family: the physician father has affairs with his office women, the mother has nightmares about her experiences as an assassin for the Resistance - experiences both secret and heralded as a heroine for saving condemned Jews, a daughter who is bright but teeters on the fine line of mental illness while devoting herself to bringing physical solace in needy countries around the world, and a son whose musical gifts as a guitarist and songwriter result in the formation of a very promising rock band at the young age of 19. As the author follows the rise of a the band 'The Master Planets' (writing with an informed musical background rarely matched in contemporary literature!), he also explores the mysterious background of Leah Dansky/Rachel Arenberg (known during the war as 'der stille Tod'), the mother of the family whose background comes to light when she is informed of the whereabouts of a Nazi criminal and murders the man and then commits suicide. The event triggers a change in the lives of not only the family, but also of the Jewish community who gather to honor a heroine in annual ceremonies. Peter's attention moves from immersion in his musical dreams to discovering the truth of the many secrets about his mother's past (was she an angel who saved Jews or a terrifying murderer of countless Nazis and Russians?), Penny completes her medical training only to fall victim to bouts of severe depression and drug abuse, and the father finds succor with an old lover. How this fragile family struggles with the past and the present within the framework of the newfound knowledge of the mother's history forms a gripping story populated with a large cast of characters so indelibly drawn that they each seem like close acquaintances by novel's end.
Peter is the main character whose transformation from a musician of dreams to wealthy man of power is perhaps best described in his own words: 'I still wanted to write and perform music, and yet I hesitated. The world had changed for me, less because of the bullet that had ended my mother's life than because of the knowledge that power spreads mysterious lines over the earth, connecting us to fates we can't grasp in our bustling little triumphs and disappointments.' Peter grows from the discovery of the seeds of his mother's past and the knowledge of this true family history and becomes a formidable force on his own, continuing to explore and understand the facts of his heritage and his past. 'The mind orders reality in odd ways.' In Penny's analysis Peter reinvented himself 'as only someone with your creativity can do.'
Donald Gallinger's mastery of the English language is inspiring and illuminates the pages of this first class novel in a spectrum that embraces humor as well as profound sadness. It is a novel well worth reading repeatedly - there is that much in it for the reader to explore. The obvious move for the book would be to become a film, but Gallinger is such a fine writer that the visuals he imbeds in the mind would be difficult to match by a cinematographer. Very Highly Recommended! Grady Harp
THE MASTER PLANETS may seem at first like two books compressed into one: a fascinating story about the formation by a dedicated small New Jersey group of boys of a rock and roll band called 'The Master Planets', and an intricately detailed mystery thriller about the lives of a courageous few surviving the purge of Jews in WW II. The intelligent choice of the title of this very brilliant novel by Donald Gallinger unfolds like a slow blooming flower as the reader gradually learns the complexities of the multifaceted plot. This is a book of importance by a master storyteller.
'When you've lost your life, you sometimes think other people know where it went. That's a mistake.' And with this early terse statement from the mother (a Polish Jew nurtured back to health in a WW II concentration camp by an American doctor who eventually married her and brought her to the United States) to her physician daughter Penny and her musically gifted son Peter, the inherent mystery of this story begins. The Jamesons are an odd family: the physician father has affairs with his office women, the mother has nightmares about her experiences as an assassin for the Resistance - experiences both secret and heralded as a heroine for saving condemned Jews, a daughter who is bright but teeters on the fine line of mental illness while devoting herself to bringing physical solace in needy countries around the world, and a son whose musical gifts as a guitarist and songwriter result in the formation of a very promising rock band at the young age of 19. As the author follows the rise of a the band 'The Master Planets' (writing with an informed musical background rarely matched in contemporary literature!), he also explores the mysterious background of Leah Dansky/Rachel Arenberg (known during the war as 'der stille Tod'), the mother of the family whose background comes to light when she is informed of the whereabouts of a Nazi criminal and murders the man and then commits suicide. The event triggers a change in the lives of not only the family, but also of the Jewish community who gather to honor a heroine in annual ceremonies. Peter's attention moves from immersion in his musical dreams to discovering the truth of the many secrets about his mother's past (was she an angel who saved Jews or a terrifying murderer of countless Nazis and Russians?), Penny completes her medical training only to fall victim to bouts of severe depression and drug abuse, and the father finds succor with an old lover. How this fragile family struggles with the past and the present within the framework of the newfound knowledge of the mother's history forms a gripping story populated with a large cast of characters so indelibly drawn that they each seem like close acquaintances by novel's end.
Peter is the main character whose transformation from a musician of dreams to wealthy man of power is perhaps best described in his own words: 'I still wanted to write and perform music, and yet I hesitated. The world had changed for me, less because of the bullet that had ended my mother's life than because of the knowledge that power spreads mysterious lines over the earth, connecting us to fates we can't grasp in our bustling little triumphs and disappointments.' Peter grows from the discovery of the seeds of his mother's past and the knowledge of this true family history and becomes a formidable force on his own, continuing to explore and understand the facts of his heritage and his past. 'The mind orders reality in odd ways.' In Penny's analysis Peter reinvented himself 'as only someone with your creativity can do.'
Donald Gallinger's mastery of the English language is inspiring and illuminates the pages of this first class novel in a spectrum that embraces humor as well as profound sadness. It is a novel well worth reading repeatedly - there is that much in it for the reader to explore. The obvious move for the book would be to become a film, but Gallinger is such a fine writer that the visuals he imbeds in the mind would be difficult to match by a cinematographer. Very Highly Recommended! Grady Harp
September 14, 2008
The Master Planets is a story about ethical ambiguity. The protagonist, Peter Jameson, isn’t exactly a nice man, but he’s not exactly a bad one, either, which makes him a lot like you and me. The story of his life, though, isn’t anything like yours and mine, which makes this novel a fascinating read.
The premise of the book is unusual but straightforward: Peter is a self-absorbed teenage rock n’ roll musician on the cusp of a fabulous career when his mother murders a long-hidden Nazi war criminal before shooting herself. The killings blast open a door to her past as a legendary fighter in the Polish Resistance and blow Peter off the arena stage and into a life as a successful if shady lawyer. He becomes obsessed with finding the real story behind his mother’s actions, and it is that quest for truth that drives the novel.
The central question is whether Peter’s mother was a heroic partisan or a horrific murderer. Was she driven by a moral imperative to destroy evil or motivated by simple revenge? She assassinated Germans without a blink and served the Russians as long as their purposes matched hers, but she turned on them, too, when the dog of revenge howled a different tune.
Peter learns most of this from General Gilaad, an Israeli who knew not just his mother but her family in Poland before the war. Throughout the book, he fills in the blanks in the past for Peter, but his stories of Nazi brutality, partisan heroics, and Russian duplicity almost always leave Peter asking more questions than they answer. The General also has an agenda of his own, so neither the reader nor Peter ever knows for sure whether his tales are slanted to enlighten or to persuade. The fog of war obscures as much of the past as it does the present.
Much of the first half of the book is devoted to Peter’s aborted career in rock ‘n roll, which sounds like a highly-unlikely sub-plot to a story centering on a Holocaust survivor, but Gallinger makes it work very, very well. The music business is one of the most ethically ambiguous industries you can imagine, with hundreds of sharp-toothed executives sucking at the money vein opened by a musician’s creativity. Peter proves himself perfectly capable of beating the best of them at their own game.
I also suspect Don Gallinger, like most of us, pounded a guitar in his teens. He may even have played in a garage band. He certainly understands musical performance on a gut level. Very few people can write successfully about music because describing it with words destroys it. Even most song lyrics—especially rock ‘n roll—are ludicrous without melody, rhythm, harmony, and tone to give them meaning. Gallinger accomplishes the feat, though, by using deft syntactic rhythm and perfectly-tuned words to make the reader feel the music:
“My guitar ran over fire and shook off heat. I heard the sound of ghostly swarms rushing down the steep aisles of the arena. The air shivered around me. When Billy and I shouted our harmonies, we heard a rioting noise. My feet picked up his rhythm and I danced my dance to the wordless chant that rose from the darkness.”
His mother’s death knocks Peter off the stage. He’s tortured by her suicide, horrified by the execution-style murder she committed, and dazed by the adulation she receives from survivors of the Holocaust. He resists attempts by others to capitalize on his mother’s reputation as a heroine of the resistance, but doesn’t hesitate to use it to open doors for himself as he builds a fortune in less-than-ethical real estate deals.
Throughout the novel, Peter struggles with the same demons that drove his mother to her shocking death. Sometimes he wins; sometimes the demons win. The Master Planets is a masterful exploration of this most universal of all themes.
The premise of the book is unusual but straightforward: Peter is a self-absorbed teenage rock n’ roll musician on the cusp of a fabulous career when his mother murders a long-hidden Nazi war criminal before shooting herself. The killings blast open a door to her past as a legendary fighter in the Polish Resistance and blow Peter off the arena stage and into a life as a successful if shady lawyer. He becomes obsessed with finding the real story behind his mother’s actions, and it is that quest for truth that drives the novel.
The central question is whether Peter’s mother was a heroic partisan or a horrific murderer. Was she driven by a moral imperative to destroy evil or motivated by simple revenge? She assassinated Germans without a blink and served the Russians as long as their purposes matched hers, but she turned on them, too, when the dog of revenge howled a different tune.
Peter learns most of this from General Gilaad, an Israeli who knew not just his mother but her family in Poland before the war. Throughout the book, he fills in the blanks in the past for Peter, but his stories of Nazi brutality, partisan heroics, and Russian duplicity almost always leave Peter asking more questions than they answer. The General also has an agenda of his own, so neither the reader nor Peter ever knows for sure whether his tales are slanted to enlighten or to persuade. The fog of war obscures as much of the past as it does the present.
Much of the first half of the book is devoted to Peter’s aborted career in rock ‘n roll, which sounds like a highly-unlikely sub-plot to a story centering on a Holocaust survivor, but Gallinger makes it work very, very well. The music business is one of the most ethically ambiguous industries you can imagine, with hundreds of sharp-toothed executives sucking at the money vein opened by a musician’s creativity. Peter proves himself perfectly capable of beating the best of them at their own game.
I also suspect Don Gallinger, like most of us, pounded a guitar in his teens. He may even have played in a garage band. He certainly understands musical performance on a gut level. Very few people can write successfully about music because describing it with words destroys it. Even most song lyrics—especially rock ‘n roll—are ludicrous without melody, rhythm, harmony, and tone to give them meaning. Gallinger accomplishes the feat, though, by using deft syntactic rhythm and perfectly-tuned words to make the reader feel the music:
“My guitar ran over fire and shook off heat. I heard the sound of ghostly swarms rushing down the steep aisles of the arena. The air shivered around me. When Billy and I shouted our harmonies, we heard a rioting noise. My feet picked up his rhythm and I danced my dance to the wordless chant that rose from the darkness.”
His mother’s death knocks Peter off the stage. He’s tortured by her suicide, horrified by the execution-style murder she committed, and dazed by the adulation she receives from survivors of the Holocaust. He resists attempts by others to capitalize on his mother’s reputation as a heroine of the resistance, but doesn’t hesitate to use it to open doors for himself as he builds a fortune in less-than-ethical real estate deals.
Throughout the novel, Peter struggles with the same demons that drove his mother to her shocking death. Sometimes he wins; sometimes the demons win. The Master Planets is a masterful exploration of this most universal of all themes.
April 19, 2009
LEAH DANSKY
Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
Copyright January 2009
591 words
I finished THE MASTER PLANETS by Donald Gallinger this afternoon. I had an unexpected trip to Emergency (chest pain that turned out to be gas, thank God) and knew that I was in for a long night of waiting, so brought the novel with me.
I am still awestruck. It is unlike any other novel I have ever read, and I've chucked down quite a few as a professor and Ph.D. in literature.
I spent the first half of the novel furious: Peter's self-indulgence was weighing on my last nerve, and I was aggravated, as an African American, to once again be reading about the Holocaust. There were other Maafas I kept wanting to scream.
But something, something I couldn't quite define kept pushing me forward, kept forcing me to take in more and more of Galinger’s words, kept insisting that I down more and more of his characters' tortured wounds, scabs, cicatrices.
And then that unknown call to which my cells had been responding sharpened. On a page I am hesitant to go back and look up, fearful of its meaning in numerological terms, I read that Peter's mother susses out the Nazis she kills by intuiting, sensing, their rage. The very way this author describes Leah Dansky’s turn of her head to the side, a peculiar angle, was suddenly, shockingly familiar.
That moment I knew this woman, I knew who she was, how she was, why she walked differently from everyone else. I understood the pit, my version of it, I understood everything, and I forgave Peter his self-indulgence and all he was to become.
I too have an intuitive gift that, fortunately, I am letting take me in the direction God intended all along. It was with a shock of recognition that I understood Leah Dansky was one of my kind--should I be so bold--and with the burst of ?relief? cognition one feels upon recognizing one's own species, the entire book turned on its head and I was committed permanently and forever.
I read with great satisfaction after that, with a hunger almost. I could taste that turn of her head, that keening, that focusing in to ward off the enemy before dispensing with him. It is the way I find a client's particular illness, the malady gunking up their emotional, psychological, spiritual works, before taking action with my intuitive counseling scalpel.
After that paragraph, Leah Dansky and I became a part of each other; she will always belong to a moment in which I began to understand more about myself. She crawled out of that pit, and people were going to die. The first time my brother crawled out of my bed, healing placed itself firmly in my future. God wept, but knew that His plan was taking fruition.
I struggle with telling too much, with stepping forward to claim all of who I am, my gifts. This novel, this Leah, she has given me that much more boldness.
I shall hang my sign soon, I feel, and long to touch the hand of a master craftsman who created a woman destined to give me back, firmly, as though commanding the performance of laps, my self, the self I was born this incarnation to be.
Thank you, Donald Gallinger; thank you.
Love and blessings,
Dr. Ni
Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
Copyright January 2009
591 words
I finished THE MASTER PLANETS by Donald Gallinger this afternoon. I had an unexpected trip to Emergency (chest pain that turned out to be gas, thank God) and knew that I was in for a long night of waiting, so brought the novel with me.
I am still awestruck. It is unlike any other novel I have ever read, and I've chucked down quite a few as a professor and Ph.D. in literature.
I spent the first half of the novel furious: Peter's self-indulgence was weighing on my last nerve, and I was aggravated, as an African American, to once again be reading about the Holocaust. There were other Maafas I kept wanting to scream.
But something, something I couldn't quite define kept pushing me forward, kept forcing me to take in more and more of Galinger’s words, kept insisting that I down more and more of his characters' tortured wounds, scabs, cicatrices.
And then that unknown call to which my cells had been responding sharpened. On a page I am hesitant to go back and look up, fearful of its meaning in numerological terms, I read that Peter's mother susses out the Nazis she kills by intuiting, sensing, their rage. The very way this author describes Leah Dansky’s turn of her head to the side, a peculiar angle, was suddenly, shockingly familiar.
That moment I knew this woman, I knew who she was, how she was, why she walked differently from everyone else. I understood the pit, my version of it, I understood everything, and I forgave Peter his self-indulgence and all he was to become.
I too have an intuitive gift that, fortunately, I am letting take me in the direction God intended all along. It was with a shock of recognition that I understood Leah Dansky was one of my kind--should I be so bold--and with the burst of ?relief? cognition one feels upon recognizing one's own species, the entire book turned on its head and I was committed permanently and forever.
I read with great satisfaction after that, with a hunger almost. I could taste that turn of her head, that keening, that focusing in to ward off the enemy before dispensing with him. It is the way I find a client's particular illness, the malady gunking up their emotional, psychological, spiritual works, before taking action with my intuitive counseling scalpel.
After that paragraph, Leah Dansky and I became a part of each other; she will always belong to a moment in which I began to understand more about myself. She crawled out of that pit, and people were going to die. The first time my brother crawled out of my bed, healing placed itself firmly in my future. God wept, but knew that His plan was taking fruition.
I struggle with telling too much, with stepping forward to claim all of who I am, my gifts. This novel, this Leah, she has given me that much more boldness.
I shall hang my sign soon, I feel, and long to touch the hand of a master craftsman who created a woman destined to give me back, firmly, as though commanding the performance of laps, my self, the self I was born this incarnation to be.
Thank you, Donald Gallinger; thank you.
Love and blessings,
Dr. Ni
February 12, 2014
I just don't know where to start with this book. It's huge in scope, deep in concept, beautifully written, and an enormously FUN READ that grabs you from the first paragraph, takes you from WW II to the 1970s rock scene to the modern world of high finance, and holds you straight through to a deeply satisfying conclusion. How did Gallinger pull it off, that's what I want to know?
We start out with a tense exchange between Daniel Gilaad, an elderly Israeli ambassador, and Peter Jameson, a handsome, fabulously rich, less-than-ethical New York corporate attorney. The ambassador wants Peter to take part in an event honoring his mother, who had been a partisan fighter in WW II Poland. In the course of the conversation, we begin to see that she had been a rather unique fighter -- and that this "uniqueness" followed her into her new life as a middle-class American wife and mother. We also see glimmerings of how the attorney's own life was twisted by the events that took place many years before he was born.
In the summer of 1973, Peter, a buoyant, handsome, rock wunderkind, had already written two songs -- "The Battle of Britain" and "Oh Laurie" -- that would become rock and roll classics. His band, The Master Planets, was gaining rapt attention across the country for the newness and heat of its music. Then came the suicide of his beautiful and withdrawn mother, and, quickly following, an avalanche of bewildering information about her identity and history as a war survivor. Far from being just another of the innumerable victims of the camps, she had in fact fought with the partisans against the Germans... and exacted retributions of a barbarity rivaling the Nazis' own. She committed numerous acts of bloody revenge. She also saved scores of lives. Shaken by the truth about the woman they thought they knew, Peter's family began to disintegrate. Meanwhile, Peter's talent -- the creative force that had defined, directed, and sustained his life -- suddenly deserted him.
Today Peter Jameson reflects again on the destruction of his family and the dissolution of his dreams. Now a ruthless attorney for international consortiums tied to organized crime, he has embraced his own brand of violence against humanity. The life he lives is far from what he imagined in his exuberant youth, and leaves him with a single, burdensome question: How to reconcile an intimate knowledge of human brutality with the heart's irrational urge to believe again, to desire, to reach out once more toward possibility?
This book is at once an action-based story and a meditation on the costs of violence and revenge. When does self-defense become atrocity, the victim a perpetrator? What happens to us when we cross that line? Spanning five decades in 336 short pages, in beautiful prose that manages to read like a mystery novel, the book explores one man's struggle with a legacy of evil, the search for meaning in the midst of ugliness. It is, simply put, one of the best debut novels I have ever read. Have a look -- you will NOT be disappointed.
We start out with a tense exchange between Daniel Gilaad, an elderly Israeli ambassador, and Peter Jameson, a handsome, fabulously rich, less-than-ethical New York corporate attorney. The ambassador wants Peter to take part in an event honoring his mother, who had been a partisan fighter in WW II Poland. In the course of the conversation, we begin to see that she had been a rather unique fighter -- and that this "uniqueness" followed her into her new life as a middle-class American wife and mother. We also see glimmerings of how the attorney's own life was twisted by the events that took place many years before he was born.
In the summer of 1973, Peter, a buoyant, handsome, rock wunderkind, had already written two songs -- "The Battle of Britain" and "Oh Laurie" -- that would become rock and roll classics. His band, The Master Planets, was gaining rapt attention across the country for the newness and heat of its music. Then came the suicide of his beautiful and withdrawn mother, and, quickly following, an avalanche of bewildering information about her identity and history as a war survivor. Far from being just another of the innumerable victims of the camps, she had in fact fought with the partisans against the Germans... and exacted retributions of a barbarity rivaling the Nazis' own. She committed numerous acts of bloody revenge. She also saved scores of lives. Shaken by the truth about the woman they thought they knew, Peter's family began to disintegrate. Meanwhile, Peter's talent -- the creative force that had defined, directed, and sustained his life -- suddenly deserted him.
Today Peter Jameson reflects again on the destruction of his family and the dissolution of his dreams. Now a ruthless attorney for international consortiums tied to organized crime, he has embraced his own brand of violence against humanity. The life he lives is far from what he imagined in his exuberant youth, and leaves him with a single, burdensome question: How to reconcile an intimate knowledge of human brutality with the heart's irrational urge to believe again, to desire, to reach out once more toward possibility?
This book is at once an action-based story and a meditation on the costs of violence and revenge. When does self-defense become atrocity, the victim a perpetrator? What happens to us when we cross that line? Spanning five decades in 336 short pages, in beautiful prose that manages to read like a mystery novel, the book explores one man's struggle with a legacy of evil, the search for meaning in the midst of ugliness. It is, simply put, one of the best debut novels I have ever read. Have a look -- you will NOT be disappointed.
January 9, 2014
This book arrived yesterday in the mail and I just finished it this afternoon! I begrudged any interruption of my reading.
This is a riveting novel, although it is not easy to pigeonhole for someone who wants to know, "What's it about?" It's about Peter Jameson, a teenager in a band (The Master Planets of the title)in the 1970s, whose mother's murder of a Nazi war criminal and her subsequent suicide change his life in countless ways. The story is richly layered, bringing the reader along on Peter's lifelong journey of discovery of who his mother was, how she affected not just him and his family, but people all over the world, and his ultimate redemption.
This novel presents a look at pieces of life in 1970s America as well as life in the Europe of World War II. It weaves these seemingly disparate times and places into a gripping tale of evil, hate, love and redemption, played out on the canvas of one young man's life.
I hope to see more from author Donald Gallinger.
This is a riveting novel, although it is not easy to pigeonhole for someone who wants to know, "What's it about?" It's about Peter Jameson, a teenager in a band (The Master Planets of the title)in the 1970s, whose mother's murder of a Nazi war criminal and her subsequent suicide change his life in countless ways. The story is richly layered, bringing the reader along on Peter's lifelong journey of discovery of who his mother was, how she affected not just him and his family, but people all over the world, and his ultimate redemption.
This novel presents a look at pieces of life in 1970s America as well as life in the Europe of World War II. It weaves these seemingly disparate times and places into a gripping tale of evil, hate, love and redemption, played out on the canvas of one young man's life.
I hope to see more from author Donald Gallinger.
April 4, 2022
A lovely book. The characters were drawn as at times weak and certainly flawed human beings, but the book was so well written and laced with enough humor that I found the characters affable and the book hopeful.
September 2, 2008
I'm reading it right now, but it's awesome so far!
July 23, 2009
Not my usual read, but he's a local author who offered to come to our book group. It was a quick read, very fast-paced, and our subsequent discussion was a lot of fun!
February 16, 2014
Fast read and totally intrigueing!
Want to Read
August 20, 2008It will be excellent!!!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews