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J SS Bach
J SS Bach is the story of three generations of women from either side of Germany's 20th Century horror story - one side, a Jewish family from Vienna, the other linked to a ranking Nazi official at Dachau concentration camp - who suffer the consequences of what men do. Fast forward to 1990s California, and two survivors from the families meet. Rosa is a young Australian musicologist; Otto is a world-famous composer and cellist. Music and history link them. A novel of music, the Holocaust, love, and a dog. The author's writing is a wonderland, captivating and drawing the reader in to the presented world. Time becomes no object as a literary universe unfolds and carries the reader through eighty years, where emotions are real and raw and beautifully given.
317 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 28, 2019
J SS Bach is a fascinating read full of history and hope. I made a challenge for myself to read books I wouldn’t typically read, this year, and I’m so glad I took a shot with this one.
Martin Goodman’s eye for detail is incredible. I could see very clearly where the characters were. I could almost smell what they smelled and feel what they felt. Which was difficult at times because the subject matter isn’t always pretty, but Martin Goodman’s beautiful writing style just earned him a new fan! This is the story of the most brutal time in history intrically woven in with beautiful characters and hope.
I highly recommend giving this one a shot. No matter what genres you typically read, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with J SS Bach!
*I was gifted a copy of this book as part of a blog tour with Random Things Tours. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, and all opinions are my own.*
Martin Goodman’s eye for detail is incredible. I could see very clearly where the characters were. I could almost smell what they smelled and feel what they felt. Which was difficult at times because the subject matter isn’t always pretty, but Martin Goodman’s beautiful writing style just earned him a new fan! This is the story of the most brutal time in history intrically woven in with beautiful characters and hope.
I highly recommend giving this one a shot. No matter what genres you typically read, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with J SS Bach!
*I was gifted a copy of this book as part of a blog tour with Random Things Tours. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, and all opinions are my own.*
July 4, 2019
https://thecaffeinatedreader.com/2019...
Where do I start? This holds all the horrors and beauty of mankind. The fact that even when someone isn’t good they can still do good. It’s a book that shows how the past echoes on in the future, how it really affects people rather than the imprint it just leaves in history books.
Goodman immediately drops you into the story, he doesn’t waste time on flowery prose and shows you the heart of the matter, the journey he wants to take you on. It’s one that’s not for the faint hearted. He also is brilliant at describing history in such a modern and stark way. He shows how ugly things were, how brutal it was, and yet his words are elegant, poignant, guiding you through brutal honesty and lyricism of music.
Three generations of women from the same family have been entangled in Otto’s life, whether they know it or not. Katja is the origins of it all and her character is not an easy one to appreciate, but, Goodman does a good job showing you enough about her to at least have some understanding on certain parts of her workings. I can appreciate the struggles she went through though they are justified in many ways.
And at the heart of everything, the main reason I wanted to read this, is music.
As I stated earlier, this book is not for the faint hearted. This shows the brutality and violence of WWII, there are Nazis before and after the war, there are people who are cruel, but it’s never needless cruelty or violence in Goodman’s writing, it all adds purposefully to the story.
I don’t typically write this in blog tours but of course my honest opinion was given in exchange. Full Review on Blog
Where do I start? This holds all the horrors and beauty of mankind. The fact that even when someone isn’t good they can still do good. It’s a book that shows how the past echoes on in the future, how it really affects people rather than the imprint it just leaves in history books.
Goodman immediately drops you into the story, he doesn’t waste time on flowery prose and shows you the heart of the matter, the journey he wants to take you on. It’s one that’s not for the faint hearted. He also is brilliant at describing history in such a modern and stark way. He shows how ugly things were, how brutal it was, and yet his words are elegant, poignant, guiding you through brutal honesty and lyricism of music.
Three generations of women from the same family have been entangled in Otto’s life, whether they know it or not. Katja is the origins of it all and her character is not an easy one to appreciate, but, Goodman does a good job showing you enough about her to at least have some understanding on certain parts of her workings. I can appreciate the struggles she went through though they are justified in many ways.
And at the heart of everything, the main reason I wanted to read this, is music.
As I stated earlier, this book is not for the faint hearted. This shows the brutality and violence of WWII, there are Nazis before and after the war, there are people who are cruel, but it’s never needless cruelty or violence in Goodman’s writing, it all adds purposefully to the story.
I don’t typically write this in blog tours but of course my honest opinion was given in exchange. Full Review on Blog
June 30, 2019
Martin Goodman’s Whitbread-shortlisted first novel On Bended Knees, set in Berlin and Dresden, explored the legacy of Nazism and WW2. Now, eleven books later, this infinitely versatile writer has returned to Europe’s heart of darkness and the horrors of the mid-20th century. In doing so, he produces his own virtuoso performance as he seeks to answer “the old riddle, how does a Nazi commit atrocities yet love Bach and Schubert?”
The Holocaust novel, after all, is often attempted and rarely with success. They are notoriously difficult and slow to write - JSS Bach took Goodman 20 years – and sometimes, as with Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil, the story (and the history) is lost amidst the scale of the writer’s task. While some authors have found success deploying an experimental form – D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel, Martin Amis’s Times Arrow, W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, and Laurent Binet’s HHhH, for instance – Goodman takes his subject matter head on, tackling the biggest human questions with courage and sincerity.
JSS Bach is an exploration of, in Goodman’s words, “the ‘parallels and paradoxes’ of sublimity and horror.” At its centre is the formidable Otto Schalmik, a famous cellist and composer, and former inmate of Dachau and Buchenwald, whom Goodman refuses to romanticise or simplify. While in the camps as a youth, Schalmik was compelled to play the Cello for Katja Birchendorf, the wife of the camp’s Nazi administrator, and thus Katja’s descendants are tied to Otto and the horror from which they have in very different ways emerged. The novel begins in medias res in 1962, and then goes back to the 1930s and ‘40s, before, in its stunning denouement, Katja’s musicologist granddaughter, Rosa, visits the elderly cellist in 1994.
In some ways the themes are reminiscent of Jonathon Littell’s The Kindly Ones (and of course Roman Polanski’s The Pianist), but the style and execution is uniquely Goodman’s. The prose is lyrical but restrained, relentlessly accurate and unflinching. Perhaps like a great interpretation of Bach, it is at once disciplined and reckless; it’s true to the historical source material, yet it’s continually surprising. By the end, Goodman doesn’t reconcile sublimity and horror, love and violence, or suggest the triumph of one over the other, but perhaps gives us the more unsettling conclusion that these things are not so clearly separate as we might wish. This is an extraordinary novel from a masterful writer at the height of his powers.
The Holocaust novel, after all, is often attempted and rarely with success. They are notoriously difficult and slow to write - JSS Bach took Goodman 20 years – and sometimes, as with Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil, the story (and the history) is lost amidst the scale of the writer’s task. While some authors have found success deploying an experimental form – D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel, Martin Amis’s Times Arrow, W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, and Laurent Binet’s HHhH, for instance – Goodman takes his subject matter head on, tackling the biggest human questions with courage and sincerity.
JSS Bach is an exploration of, in Goodman’s words, “the ‘parallels and paradoxes’ of sublimity and horror.” At its centre is the formidable Otto Schalmik, a famous cellist and composer, and former inmate of Dachau and Buchenwald, whom Goodman refuses to romanticise or simplify. While in the camps as a youth, Schalmik was compelled to play the Cello for Katja Birchendorf, the wife of the camp’s Nazi administrator, and thus Katja’s descendants are tied to Otto and the horror from which they have in very different ways emerged. The novel begins in medias res in 1962, and then goes back to the 1930s and ‘40s, before, in its stunning denouement, Katja’s musicologist granddaughter, Rosa, visits the elderly cellist in 1994.
In some ways the themes are reminiscent of Jonathon Littell’s The Kindly Ones (and of course Roman Polanski’s The Pianist), but the style and execution is uniquely Goodman’s. The prose is lyrical but restrained, relentlessly accurate and unflinching. Perhaps like a great interpretation of Bach, it is at once disciplined and reckless; it’s true to the historical source material, yet it’s continually surprising. By the end, Goodman doesn’t reconcile sublimity and horror, love and violence, or suggest the triumph of one over the other, but perhaps gives us the more unsettling conclusion that these things are not so clearly separate as we might wish. This is an extraordinary novel from a masterful writer at the height of his powers.
July 5, 2019
The first thing I have to say is a big thank you to the author, Martin Goodman, and the publishers, Wrecking Ball Press, for arranging a signed copy for me! That was a lovely little surprise when I opened the book. And it’s even more special now that I’ve read it and enjoyed it so much.
From the first page of J SS Bach, I was completely drawn into the story. Martin Goodman has a narrative style that feels at once comfortable and familiar. The book’s short chapters make it extremely readable; I would find myself picking it up to read a few pages and being completely captivated. I genuinely couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pages. Reading this book made me feel transported (and really, isn’t that what it’s all about?)
As a musician, I really felt that this book captured the amazing power of music to bring people together. The way Otto played, his passion flowing from him – so relatable. Something in these pages truly spoke to me. I can’t even put it into words; I just found it so moving.
Goodman moves seamlessly between time periods throughout the novel and I was never once lost or confused. I loved making the links between characters and seeing their stories intertwine. And everyone felt realistic, with true human emotions and flaws. Nobody was a cardboard cut-out, not even the SS officers as I’ve seen before in other books.
Honestly, this was just so so good. There was so much emotion imbued in the pages, in part due to descriptions that were both starkly beautiful and haunting. However, the author managed to balance the poignancy of the story with more light-hearted moments of joy; I’m always impressed when a book about WWII is not all doom and gloom as would be so easy and expected!
This is a new favourite of mine and I would definitely recommend it to fans of WWII fiction or anyone with musical inclinations!
From the first page of J SS Bach, I was completely drawn into the story. Martin Goodman has a narrative style that feels at once comfortable and familiar. The book’s short chapters make it extremely readable; I would find myself picking it up to read a few pages and being completely captivated. I genuinely couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pages. Reading this book made me feel transported (and really, isn’t that what it’s all about?)
As a musician, I really felt that this book captured the amazing power of music to bring people together. The way Otto played, his passion flowing from him – so relatable. Something in these pages truly spoke to me. I can’t even put it into words; I just found it so moving.
Goodman moves seamlessly between time periods throughout the novel and I was never once lost or confused. I loved making the links between characters and seeing their stories intertwine. And everyone felt realistic, with true human emotions and flaws. Nobody was a cardboard cut-out, not even the SS officers as I’ve seen before in other books.
Honestly, this was just so so good. There was so much emotion imbued in the pages, in part due to descriptions that were both starkly beautiful and haunting. However, the author managed to balance the poignancy of the story with more light-hearted moments of joy; I’m always impressed when a book about WWII is not all doom and gloom as would be so easy and expected!
This is a new favourite of mine and I would definitely recommend it to fans of WWII fiction or anyone with musical inclinations!
May 16, 2020
Otto is a 19 year old Jewish boy when the Nazi's removed him from his home in Vienna and send him to Dachau. His talent for playing Bach on the cello is a big part of this novel. The time period covers the span of 3 generations of women who are important to this story. The author has done extensive research on the Holocaust and if you are a classical music lover, you will appreciate this book all the more.
May 23, 2020
Definitely recommend this book. It's about the Holocaust and it's also about music. I don't want to say any more on what it is about except that it's about dealing with memories too. It made me think about music in different and more appreciative ways. Great characterisation, and I loved the relationship between Otto and Rosa, their awkwardness around each other was so well written, and the ending was just perfect.
November 30, 2023
I really didn't like where the story went, from the chapter with the airport, till the end. Before that the book was interesting.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews