A fugitive train loaded with the plunder of a doomed people. A dazzling jewelled pendant in the form of a stylized peacock. And three men - an American infantry captain in World War II, an Israeli-born dealer in art stolen by the Nazis, and a pioneering psychiatrist in fin-de-siecle Budapest - who find their carefully-wrought lives turned upside-down by three fierce women, each locked in a struggle against her own history and the history of our times. And at the centre of Love and Treasure, nested like a photograph hidden in a locket, a mystery: where does the worth of a people and its treasures truly lie? What is the value of a gift, when giver and recipient have been lost - of a love offering when the beloved is no more? In an intricately constructed narrative that is by turns funny and tragic, thrilling and harrowing, with all the …
A fugitive train loaded with the plunder of a doomed people. A dazzling jewelled pendant in the form of a stylized peacock. And three men - an American infantry captain in World War II, an Israeli-born dealer in art stolen by the Nazis, and a pioneering psychiatrist in fin-de-siecle Budapest - who find their carefully-wrought lives turned upside-down by three fierce women, each locked in a struggle against her own history and the history of our times. And at the centre of Love and Treasure, nested like a photograph hidden in a locket, a mystery: where does the worth of a people and its treasures truly lie? What is the value of a gift, when giver and recipient have been lost - of a love offering when the beloved is no more? In an intricately constructed narrative that is by turns funny and tragic, thrilling and harrowing, with all the expertise and narrative drive that readers have come to expect from her work, Waldman traces the unlikely journey, from 1914 Budapest to post-war Salzburg to present-day New York, of the peacock pendant whose significance changes - token of friendship, love-offering, unlucky talisman with the changes of fortune undergone by her characters as they find themselves caught up in the ebb and flow of modern European history.
It was somewhat disconnected. There were four sections which really told kind of totally different stories, with only the most minor of connections. My favorite section, the third section, was the least favorite of everybody else in my book club; I liked it because it gave the full story of the two main women involved with the locket (read the book to find out details of that). It was okay, but really not much to write home about…
Subjects
Pendants (Jewelry)
Man-woman relationships
Families
Reminiscing in old age
Jewish property
Fiction
Confiscations and contributions
World War (1939-1945) fast (OCoLC)fst01180924
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) fast (OCoLC)fst00958866
