‘The Postcard’ by Anne Berest

Translated from the French by Tina Kover

This book is an autofictional telling of the virtual extermination of a Jewish family by the Vichy regime. It stands almost as a companion piece to Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise and indeed, Nemirovsky appears as a shadow character in this book. For me, it is a strong story betrayed by some lacklustre telling of the frame story.

Expectant mother, Anne, is fascinated by a postcard that is delivered to her mother’s family home in Paris in 2003. On the front is a photo of the Opera Garnier in Paris. On the back written in an awkward hand are the names of the author’s great-grandparents and their children, all of whom had died in concentration camps. Given that court cases were underway over reparations for Nazi confiscations, was this an anti-Semitic taunt? Was there someone who knew more of the family history than the family did itself? Why was it sent?

And so, framed as some sort of detective story/ researcher-as-hero search, Anne turns to her mother who has herself been undertaking her family history research for years before the arrival of this postcard. Her mother co-operates to a point, but then withdraws once it gets close to her own part of the family history, leaving Anne to continue the search alone.

The novel (at least, it describes itself as ‘fiction’ on the copyright page) alternates between the current-day search and the findings of that search. I have no problem at all with Berest’s telling of her great-grandparents’ and grandparents’ story. She captures particularly well the gradual tightening of the Nuremberg Laws and stripping away of rights, wealth and independence described so well in Saul Friedlander’s Nazi Germany and the Jews. Ephraim and Emma, Anna’s great-grandparents had already fled once, from Moscow to Latvia, and then had moved briefly to join Ephraim’s parents in Palestine, before returning to Paris where Ephraim sought ceaselessly to obtain French citizenship for himself and his family. He did not succeed, but in any event it would not have saved the family: although at first directed against ‘foreign Jews’ the racial laws against Jews would have trumped any citizenship claims anyway. Living away from Paris, the family seems to be existing in a summer bubble, until all of a sudden the Nuremberg laws come right to their door. The family is separated, with two children sent off on the pretext that they were going to work, the parents left to desperately search for them, and one married daughter, Myriam, sent away by her father to avoid deportation as well. The story follows Myriam, who is the only one to survive as she lives in isolated places and joins the resistance. But this is not a ‘derring-do’ resistance type story: her activities are spasmodic and often in abeyance. Her marriage, which in many ways was her salvation, takes her to strange places and experiences that she would never have anticipated. It is Myriam who haunts the Hotel Lutetia, where prisoners released from the camps are sent, searching for the family that she will never find.

So strong was the Myriam story that the frame story seemed insipid and banal in comparison. Heavily conversation-based, I found myself resenting when it intruded on the main narrative, and I wished that the narrator and her mother would just get out of the way. One part that was interesting was the modern-day Jewish parents’ outraged response to anti-antisemitism experienced by the narrator’s daughter at school, and the discussion of inter-generational trauma. But for me, this just distracted from the main story. After all, does the world really need another family history as quest novel? I ask myself. It has been done over and over and over again.

So, I have mixed feelings about the book. The story of Miriam and the loss of her family was excellent: the frame story (which may well have been true) less so.

My rating: 8/10 (high because of my regard for Miriam’s story)

Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library