My favorite book of 2023: THE POSTCARD

The Postcard by Anne Berest (Translated by Tina Kover)

Europa Editions: May 16, 2023

464 pages, $28.00

In January 2003 a postcard arrived at the Paris home of writer Anne Berest’s parents. The only message: the names of her maternal great-grandparents and two of their children, all of whom had been murdered in the Holocaust. There is no return address and the handwriting is unusual. Who sent it and why, 60 years later?

In an attempt to discover the identity of the sender, Berest and her mother (the daughter of the oldest child, the only family member to survive the Holocaust) begin investigating the past to learn what happened to her great-grandparents and their children. (Berest’s surviving grandmother refused to talk about the Holocaust.)

The result of their search is this memoir/novel hybrid. It’s a history of the Rabinovitch family who fled Russia to Latvia after the Revolution, then emigrated to Palestine, and finally settled in France, where they were caught up in the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews. Berest also explores what life was like for Jews in Vichy France, at the societal and personal levels, with its collaborators and resisters.

The Postcard is also an examination of the effect of the Holocaust on one Jewish family’s descendants. Berest, a secular Jew, is compelled to examine her upbringing and reconsider her relationship to Judaism. And yes, she eventually learns who sent the postcard and why.

The Postcard is a riveting and heartbreaking read. I’ve thought about it a lot since I read it in late Spring, and I’m happy to say I’ve persuaded several people to read it. It was the clear choice for my favorite book of the year.