"A candid look through the eyes of characters to a harsh event in history"
Reviewed by Sandra Wurman
Posted November 21, 2024
Novella / Short Story | Non-Fiction Biography
THE JOURNAL I DID NOT KEEP by Lore Segal is simply a walk with words through her life. Seemingly simplistic verbiage showcases some key moments in her memory and her family history. Candidly speaking creative genius. I feel as though I know Lore Segal through her writings. I laughed through many sections of her Ladies Lunch. And then wept as well. In THE JOURNAL I DID NOT KEEP I am once again reminded of the talent in telling a story through what I guess are poetic movements. We are moving through her life story, and it is so visceral that we feel every moment.
Once again I am reminded to keep hankies handy. If not my weepy eyes cause me to take breaks. It is during those breaks that my mind travels to the rich history of my family. And then it too takes the path down my husband’s family tree.
There is a rhythm in how this author writes. An ebb and flow that is truly mesmerizing and only takes a few lines before you are a captive audience. When she speaks of the kinder transport I think of my mother-in-law’s niece Teresa. There is a great truth in the reality of those children connecting with their birth families.
In addition to the construction of the book like a series of vignettes, the historical events are like punches. Quick, harsh, and then left. Movement is intrinsically vital to the story that travels back and forth effortlessly from the present time in Manhattan to the past in Vienna. 2024 back to 1936 and then some.
No matter what nationality or religion you are there are many shared family memories that are certain to bring a smile to your face. Life isn’t always bright and sunny. But most have not experienced this dank darkness. It is through survivors that we learn the truth. Through their stories. My own Bubby, grandmother, cooked much like Lore Segal’s. Her home was a mishmash of things. It was a place of love and traditions.
THE JOURNAL I DID NOT KEEP is a story of stories. Each story has relevance to memory. Lore Segal speaks of memory in many shades of gray. Surprised at what she did remember, feeling at odds with the accuracy, dismayed at the changes and highly affected by starting recollections of people in the past and their destiny. When older folks tell stories of when they were young we are tempted, at times, to intervene with comments about their factuality. As if that really matters. Lore Segal’s less in THE JOURNAL I DID NOT KEEP is that it doesn’t. If a fact is slightly altered who does it hurt? The truth will come out and for some, that truth is too harsh for the mind to recall in stark detail.
I quote Lore Segal, “Remembering is a complicated thing.”
Grappling with herself over whether to change some things that are now, in the present, not socially or politically correct. In the end, she decides to include her tales intact.
SUMMARY
A DEFINITIVE COLLECTION FROM ONE OF AMERICA'S FINEST WRITERS—INCLUDING NEW AND NEVER-BEFORE-COLLECTED WORK
From the award-winning New Yorker writer comes this essential volume spanning almost six decades. Admired for “a voice unlike any other” (Cynthia Ozick) and a style both “wry and poignant” (The New Yorker), Lore Segal is a master literary stylist.
This volume collects some of her finest work—including new and uncollected writing—and selections from her novels, stories, and essays.
From her very first story—which appeared in The New Yorker in 1961—to today, Segal’s voice has been unique in contemporary American literature: Hilarious and urbane, heartbreaking and profound, keen and utterly unsentimental.
Segal has often used her own biography as both subject and inspiration: At age ten she was sent on the Kindertransport from Vienna to England to escape the Nazi invasion of Austria; grew up among English foster families; and eventually made her way to the United States. This experience was the impetus for her first novel, Other People’s Houses, and one that she has revisited throughout her career.
From that beginning, Segal’s writing has ranged widely across form as well as subject matter. Her flawless prose and light touch belie the rigor and intelligence she brings to her art—qualities that were not missed by the New York Times reviewer who pointedly observed, “though it was not written by a man . . . Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel.”
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