Kunstler's In Paradise by Cathleen Schine

Künstlers In Paradise by Cathleen Schine 

272 pages

Published March 2023 by Henry Holt and Co. 

Publisher's Summary: 

Julian Künstler comes from New York City to L.A. like many a lost twenty-something: to find a job writing in the entertainment industry. But this is 2020 and his temporary visit turns into an extended stay, trapped by the lockdown in a little house in Venice with his glamorous, eccentric, and ancient grandmother. Ninety-three-years old, Mamie came to Los Angeles from Vienna at eleven with her parents in 1939 among a wave of Jewish musicians, directors, and intellectuals escaping Hitler. As the months roll on, she begins to tell Julian her stories of the eminent emigres she’s known and the magical world they inhabited as their old world was destroyed—people like Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, and Greta Garbo. Not quite all her stories, however. The pandemic isolates Julian from his world, but from Mamie he learns of the world that came before him and how much the past holds of the future. A tender, sharply wrought comic novel about exile, the power of stories handed down and handed on, and the power of stories held secretly in the heart.

My Thoughts: 

How about the thoughts of some other people first: 

• Kirkus Reviews: dreamy, drifty, and droll
• Wall Street Journal: abuzz with biting repartee
• New York Times: a paean to the regenerative power of storytelling
• Chicago Review of Books: Schine’s writing is cut glass, a mix of Jewish humor and family banter

I tell you all this so that you know that I'm not alone in my appreciation for this book. I'm a huge fan of Schine's dialogue - it's the kind of dialogue that feels both natural and yet nothing like a conversation you yourself would ever have but really wish you would. 

Schine's book always have a depth to them that the lightness of her touch belies. Salomea (Mamie) comes to Los Angeles, with her parents and grandfather, a refuge. Leaving their lives, surviving when so many they knew and loved perished at the hands of the Nazis, leaves each of them with scars they will carry for the rest of their lives. They are never again allowed to be the people they were in Vienna, despite their soft landing in paradise. 

All of this is history Julian was unaware of until the Covid lockdown strands him at his grandmother's house, where he has gone to help her recover from a fractured wrist. Julian, who has been feeling very, very sorry for himself and who has been adrift all of his adult life, is feeling very much like a refuge and suffers from survivor guilt himself, knowing that his family is much more threatened by Covid than he is. But Mamie's stories begin to give him a greater perspective and he begins to see a future for himself in her stories. 

"Mamie, his wonderful grandmother - exotic and quixotic, his mother said. And neurotic, his father would add. For Julian, she had always been, instead, possibility, an extension of his family into foreign lands, an escape from the locked-in dailiness of life."

I loved my grandmothers dearly; but I sure couldn't help wishing I'd had Mamie for a grandmother. She is no-nonsense, caring, quick witted, and honest (except when she's holding back the parts of her life that are hers alone). Mamie's companion, Agatha, is sardonic and loyal. Julian is the least likable of the main characters; but, if you've loved a 24-year-old, you'll recognize him. The more time he spends with Mamie, the less self-absorbed he becomes, recognizing that someone else may actually be a more interesting person and that other people might truly want the best for him. 

"He loved her. Not a new feeling - he had always loved her. But he'd loved her in a rhythmic, unconscious way, each visit from his grandmother or trip to her house in Los Angeles a new revelation of love, soon forgotten, made irrelevant by distance, by time. Now he loved her consciously, consistently, daily. He loved the way she looked, somewhat worse for wear, that bright hair dyed by Agatha every three weeks, her lipstick an optimistic pink, her silk scarves thrown around her neck with the same aplomb as in her youth, her gentle gravelly voice, her stories." 

I feel in love with Mamie and her stories, too. This book gave me, as they say, all of the feels. It's a book I would read again. And that's saying something.