Click Here To Purchase From Amazon The Chase for Beauty

Author:  Robert Mendelson

ISBN:  978-1-60037-278-0

Everything in life was good up until that point.  His medical career was a success and his family were happy and secure.  That is until a so-called friend of his daughter Karen, killed her one night on their back porch while her parents were sleeping upstairs. 

The Chase for Beauty chronicles the lives of a family in turmoil, a family relentlessly plagued by life’s miseries.  Despite these misfortunes however there is something beautiful that emerges in the humanity of the Hurwitz family.  At the end of the book I definitely found that there is beauty in the ‘darkest of places’ and what a lesson this is to us all.  They took each blow at a time and rebuilt their lives again, always giving something back to their community and civilization as a whole.

Mendelson here does what he does best.  He tells a story in a journalistic style, interviewing those around him and gathering evidence like a detective, frantically trying to put this family’s demons to bed.  It is face-paced with a driven plot and easily read.  Mendelson is definitely a story-teller, but he does not imbue his narrative with his own voice, he stands back and allows the reader to draw his own conclusions.  There is no demand on sympathy from the reader, there doesn’t need to be as the tragic events of the Hurwitz’s lives speak for themselves.  It is told in an objective and honest way, sometimes acutely honest in the way it lays bare Hurwitz’s feelings about his wife and his daughter Karen.

Ultimately I felt that this book gave a voice to a family and a man who had kept a dignified silence throughout his life when it would have been so easy to speak out and defend himself against the people who seemed to want to destroy him.  Mendelson gave him that voice and let his story speak for itself.  I think that this is a valuable lesson to us all as it is so easy to hit out against those who attack us and our families.  Hurwitz shows that there is definitely dignity and respect in silence.

I think most fundamentally this book is about a moral and spiritual struggle against the evils of this world.  It is a real triumph in that it deftly portrays how good is ultimately stronger than evil in the end.  It also allows the reader to recognise that the real heroes are the ones that are all around us, people like you and me who speak out for what we believe and for turning adversity into triumph.  As a reader it taught me many things, essentially a moral tale it teaches how to withstand grief and anger and channel it into something positive for the future.  In his tireless effort to make his and his family’s life better he never gave up but willingly faced his demons head on and came through the other side a stronger and more determined man. 

As the author Mendelson rightly said ‘I don’t think this kind of story can be told too much.’  As a journalist he had an ear for a good story and knew that that it needed to be told, and thankfully now it has been told for the world to learn from it and live by it.  This is not a light-hearted read, to be honest it takes a lot out of the reader and it is an emotional struggle at times, but it challenges the reader and demands their involvement, asks questions and leaves the reader asking questions.  It opens up a completely different way of viewing the world.  A truly inspirational read.

The above review was contributed by:  Kathryn Peters: Kathryn was born in Northern Ireland, has studied English at St. Andrews University in Scotland and Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin.  She writes poetry and is hoping to undertake teacher training to teach English and Creative Writing next year.

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