Fetch Your Copy City Of Secrets Scripted By Stewart ONan Formatted As Textbook

review in today'sBoston Sunday Globe, I am eager to read this,



I have read and enjoyed many of this author's offerings, but this seems to differ because it is a fact based novel.
It mirrors the life of the main character, Brand and the struggles prior to the birth of the state of Israel.
He is a Latvian victim of the Russians, the Holocaust and then a prisoner of the Russians again, After the loss of his entire family and settling in Palestine, he survived by imagination, driving a cab, spying and involvement with underground resistance.


O'Nan clearly utilized extensive research to portray the pictures of ancient history, more modern periods and a travelogue, The characters in this story and the tangential residents of the area are easily visualized, Although he is not identified as such, he described many Jewish religious practices in fine detail,

“He'd confused religion and emotion, the universal and the personal, With no one to confide in, the excitement he'd felt seemed private and suspect, . . except he had been delivered out of this last Egypt, along with a million and a half others, and the fact that he was here,now, among thousands of them, wasn't luck or chance but history.
He was free. What he did now was up to him, so while he did not run out and join the nearest temple, he felt renewed.
. . "p.

This slim offering is intriguing and suspenseful, an admirable effort of O'Nan's, Ive long wanted to try a Stewart ONan book so when I saw this book, I decided to request it, This may not have been the best of ONans books to start off with, though I can certainly see that he has an excellent way with words.
I think having a bit of background in the Irgun and the history surrounding this novel would have been very helpful in allowing me to appreciate the story better.
I did get lost a few times as to just what was happening, But then again Brand, the main protagonist in this book, was also often times lost as he wasnt given enough background information and was kept in the dark as to the Irguns plans.


Brand, a/k/a Jossi Jorgensen, is a taxi driver in Jerusalem in, Hes a Latvian Holocaust survivor who is given false papers by the Haganah, which is from what I understand and I may be incorrect a group set up to protect Jewish immigrants from the British mandate and the local Arabs.
The Haganah was not a violent group however, Brand becomes involved with the Irgun, an underground resistance movement, He is first used as a taxi driver for the Irgun but then is tested in more dangerous endeavors,

I think the main problem I had with this book is that the author assumes his readers are familiar with this period of time and place.
Not being familiar with the history referred to, I still did have a vague understanding of what was happening and understood the dangers that Brand found himself in.
There is still a story in here that can be enjoyed, Brands back story is an emotional one and his present state of affairs had me longing for a good outcome for him, as well as for his prostitute girlfriend Eva.
The story kept me turning the pages and I had to see it through to the end, I most definitely will go on to read other Stewart ONan books,

This book was given to me by the publisher through First to Read in return for an honest review.

An interesting story, well written, I had no knowledge about Jerusalem after,,Stewart O'Nan commits the most heinous crime of a historical novelist he muddles time, Is itorThe bombing of the King David Hotel by the Zionist Irgun, the culminating event of City of Secrets, took place in July,.
Just before the bombing, O'Nan mentions the high commissioner flying off the London to consult with Churchill, Churchill was no longer the Prime Minister in, The Tories were ousted in July,,

The devil is in the details, This is myth book to read by Stewart O'Nan, I loved the first four, However, this one did not do it for me, which is surprising because I am quite interested in WWII and its aftermath.
The novel is set in Palestine during the final years of the British Mandate, Israel would become a nation in, It depicts insurgent efforts by the Mossad and Irgun against the occupying British forces, For some reason, I found it confusing, I could not keep the characters and their allegiances straight, Perhaps that was an intentional literary device to mirror what life was like in Palestine at the time, Ratingsto
Writing:,
Plot:
Characters:
Emotional impact:,
Overall

I received this book for free in exchange for a review, I had a hard time following it and stayed lost throughout most of the book, I didn't really get a read on any of the characters, I didn't care about them or what happened to them and sometimes I would get confused about who was who, This author has potential but may need to explain things in a little more detail in order to not lose their readers.
I think I'm going to have to accept that O'Nan isn't for me, This attempt at a political historical thriller was too boring to make it through, I found myself skimming, waiting for Brand to get his crap together so I could give a damn about him, I gave up this quest aboutpages in, City of Secrets is set in Jerusalem in, Jewish refugees have been fleeing Europe with the hope of settling in Palestine, There were quotas on the number of Jewish people who could take this route which led to many illegal refugees, The protagonist, Brand, is one of them, He gets involved with resistance fighters who provide him with a fake identity, Nothing is free and there is an expectation of payback through illegal actions,

The problem with this book is that there is no context around the situation, I felt like I arrived in the middle of a movie, Stewart O'Nan is renowned for his character development and that was also missing here, Brand was a stranger to me right to the end of the book,

I highly recommend seeking out other books by Stewart O'Nan, He's a wonderful author. The Names of the Dead, Last Night at the Lobster or The Odds are all good choices, City of Secrets was a miss for me,



.Had never heard of the Irgun, the Haganah or really knew nothing much about Isreal after the war, So of course I turned to the great and powerful wiki, Which turned out to be unnecessary because when I got to the end of the book, O'Nan furnished a historical note about this, why it wasn't in the front of the book I don't know.
Seems to make more sense to me, since when I started reading this I felt as if I was in no man's land, totally clueless.


Still the main story is about Brand, a young man who had lost his family, his wife in the war.
Spent time in prison camps and has entered Israel illegally using forged documents, One get the flavor of Israel during this time, roadblocks, retaliation and the constant threat of violence, Brand joins the Irgun, fighting against the British and their mandate, falls in love with Eve, another operative, but soon he is in over his head.
He has a big decision to make,

The writing was great, the action was non stop with Brands back story threaded in between as is his relationship with Eve.
That I had never read a book covering this topic was a big plus, But my advice, read the author's note at the back first if you are as clueless on this subject as I was.


ARC from Netgalley, What a sad, unpleasant book to read,

It has a great setting/factual backgroundthe underground struggle to form the new nation of Israel after WWII, SPOILER ALERT It has great potential actionblowing up RR tracks, cutting a suspected traitors throat, and blowing up the King David Hotel.
It has characters with great potentialthe cell members, including Asher and Eva the lovely blonde the British officers,

But the main character, Brand, is too passive to carry the story, He wants to die, yet doesnt have the courage to make that happen, He wants to tell Eva he loves her, but is afraid to lose her, He sits passively, agonizing outside in his taxicab while Eva has sex with strangers to gather information for the underground,

Everything eats away at himhis past, the danger, his love for Eva, the things Eva does, Its patheticI felt sorry for Brandbut it is not fun or exciting to read, The action that could be exciting is rendered obliquely, in a limited point of view, and is not thrilling or even very interesting.
The way the story is told mitigates against excitement,

This is an antithriller, Too bad the author wasted a good topic,
After the fabulous sitelinkLast Night at the Lobster, I was eager for another Stewart O'Nan novel, I chose City of Secrets for the postWWII Jerusalem setting and the element of Jewish spies, Sounded like a book written especially for me, Alas, CoS fell short of my expectations, retaining O'Nan's sparse, emotionsdriven narrative style, but leaving too much context unspoken.


While I know a fair amount on the Zionist movement following WWII, I was not as up to speed on the rebel groups who fought for the Holy Land and raised hell against the British in that time period.
Unfortunately, CoS did little to explain the why of action sequences and turncoat suspense, I was often confused, not to what was happening, but what it meant in the bigger picture,

All in all, this was an atmospheric historical fiction novel that could have had a stronger impact if more of the backstory had been fleshed out.
Authentischer Einblick in die Zeit des britischen Mandats und vor der israelischen Staatsgründung: Der Protagonist Brand wird dank seiner Verbindungen Taxifahrer in Jerusalem.
Doch seine Kontakte wollen mehr von ihm als normale Taxifahrten und Brand wird nicht ganz freiwillig und dank seiner Freundin Eva Teil von Anschlägen der Hagana.
Dabei

bleibt Brand oft im Dunkeln und das spiegelt sich auch in der Erzählweise wider, Leider aber auch mit wenig Informationen zu historischen Zusammenhängen und verwirrenden Routenbeschreibungen durch Jerusalem, This review originally appeared in BookBrowse: sitelink bookbrowse. com/reviews/in
In his new novel, City of Secrets, Stewart ONan spins a tale of espionage and intrigue as richly layered and complex as the city it portrays,Jerusalem during the British Mandate.
Like the city of Casablanca portrayed in theMichael Curtiz eponymous filmand indeed there are many thematic similaritiesJerusalem is a place where no one is who he claims to be, spies are everywhere, and the characters are players moving toward a larger and dangerous purpose about which most of them can only guess.
“The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, . . everyone seemed to be in costume, reenacting the miraculous past, ” Also like Casablanca, Jerusalem is teeming with refugees, Here, they have either fled the violence and antiSemitism that culminated in the Holocaust or, like Brand, the novels protagonist, have arrived as survivors, their old homes gone, their old lives destroyed.


Brand is a Jew from Riga, Latvia who survived because he “was lucky” and could “fix an engine, ” His parents, sister, and wife were not so lucky the Germans herded them into the forest and shot them, Following the British White Paper of, Jewish immigration to Palestine was severely restricted and then became illegal in, and so Brand, like most survivors, was smuggled in on a ship operated by Jewish resistance organizations, in his case the Haganah, of which he soon became a member.
“Like so many refugees, he drove a taxi, provided by the underground, His new name was Jossi, His job was to listen again lucky, since as a prisoner he had years of experience, ”

In ONans hands, the landscape of the city and the country beyond take on a vivid and cinematic richness involving all the senses.
The reader wanders with Brand through the confusing constructions of gates, walls, and narrow, dark streets that was Jerusalem, hearing the wind and driving rain, tantalized by the steamy aromas of the coffee souks, catching the strains of jazz standards that rise above the static on Brands cheap radio as he and Eva dance across the floor in her flat.
ONan states that the Jerusalem ofis “long gone,” rendering modern guidebooks and maps useless, The Jewish Quarter of which he writes was destroyed, and many of the old neighborhoods have been bulldozed, He had to find maps and guidebooks from the time, many of which were “riddled with inconsistencies, ” In the end, he used the lack of information to his authorial advantage, “This way, the author, the character, and the reader are all learning at the same time, trying to navigate the physical and political labyrinth of postwar Jerusalem.
”

The story opens at the time when the Haganah, which had been opposed to violent tactics, has joined forces with the Irgun, an organization known for its terrorist acts and revolutionary doctrine.
Brand understands that he is a part of the escalating resistance against the British Mandate, but the nature of his role and the larger scope of the mission remain hidden from him.
As the story progresses, he finds himself embroiled in increasingly dangerous and farranging missions, and it soon becomes clear that he is hurtling inescapably toward an action that could change history.
Although Brand remains in the dark about the specifics, any reader familiar with the history of Mandatory Palestine will soon recognize the event toward which the novels arc accelerates.


One of Brands jobs as a driver is to chauffer Eva, another cell member, to her assignations, Eva, like Brand a survivor who lost everyone during the Holocaust, works as a prostitute in order to glean information from the British.


Both Eva and Brand hide their pasts and fight attachment, but soon, despite his agonizing guilt for betraying his wifes memory, Brand falls in love.
“For all its confusion, love divined the truth, At bottom the heart was honest, Questioned long enough, it gave up its secrets, no matter how complicated or how painful, ” He understands that her part in the resistance and her knowledge of the coming action are larger than his, yet he still strives to protect her as he failed to protect his wife and family.


Through Brands character, ONan explores the deeper moral conflicts that arose in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Like many survivors, Brand tries to escape his past and construct a new life and a new identity, but his past keeps circling back to him, and he is haunted by his inaction.
“In the camps hed learned to stand and watch, It saved his life and made him useless, If hed come here to change, he needed to do better, ” For him, change means fighting with the Haganah to establish the nation of his people, And yet, taking action also has its consequences, as Brand soon learns, By nature “a lover of sunsets and protector of the weak,” he must learn to be ruthless he must learn to kill.
But he cant get used to the idea, When Eva accuses him of wanting, “a revolution without bloodshed,” he responds that no, what he wants is a revolution that is “just.
” In the end, he will understand that the price of justice is indeed grave,

In his introductory letter to the reader, ONan quotes David Lynch: “Its people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music.
” Its an old storyyesbut in City of Secrets, it has been made new, It is a novel to be read quickly the first time because it is difficult to put down, Afterward, it becomes a novel to read again and again because each time, the labyrinth of Jerusalem streets will offer up a new gem.








,