Mr. Rosenblum's List has been working on my mind for some time, but I couldn't quite commit to reading it. It's one of those strange cases, when you read a novel by an author, and love it so much, that you know reading any of their other works would inevitably lead to disappointment. I read The Novel in the Viola (or The House at Tyneford) a while back, and it instantly became one of my favorites. Could any of Natasha Solomons' other novels measure up? In short, the answer is yes.
Mr. Rosenblum's List seemingly has a similar set-up to The Novel in the Viola: European Jewish refugee travels to England at the dawn of WWII, and deals with displacement and homesickness while adapting to the English way of life. This short description may encapsulate the core issue at the heart of both novels yet they couldn't be more different. The Novel and the Viola is what is often called a 'big house novel', centered around the idyllic manor house of a British family, and could also loosely be termed as a romance. While these descriptions do not do this wonderful book justice, they do differentiate it greatly from Mr. Rosenblum's List.
The main characters of the book, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum, are an aging couple, long past their days of romance and excitement - yet their relationship and the difficulty of connecting to each other after decades spent side by side, is real in a way that no romance novel can truly be. The difference in attitude towards their new country of residence is at the core of the novel's conflict: is assimilation equal to forgetting? While Jack endeavors to live very much in the now and tomorrow, Sadie is stuck in the past - each resenting the other for their way of coping. While I initially very much agreed with Jack's can-do attitude, as the novel progressed, I developed a deeper sympathy towards Sadie. Solomons built on the layers of her past and her character, like the layers of the Baumtorte she bakes in the book (which also made me crave previously unknown German baked goods). Themes of remembrance were also fittingly combined with aspects of the Jewish religion, which are very much about honoring the past and cherishing age-old customs.
As a foreigner living in England, the themes of displacement and alienation in this novel really hit home for me, while I greatly enjoyed the beautiful descriptions of the Dorset scenery, which I had come to love in The Novel in the Viola.
Buy the book online here.
Visit Natasha Solomons' website here.
