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Peril Reviewed By Bani Sodermark of Bookpleasures.com
- By Bani Sodermark
- Published February 28, 2013
- Biographies & Memoirs
Bani Sodermark
Reviewer Bani Sodermark. Bani has a Ph.D in mathematical physics and has been a teacher of physics and mathematics at the university level in both India and Sweden. For the last decade, her interests have been spirituality, healthy living and self-development. She has written a number of reviews on Amazon. Bani is a mother to two children.
Author.Pearl
Goodman
Publisher:Bridgeross
Communications
ISBN:978-0-9878244-6-2
Growing
Pains
This
is a very detailed, deeply honest and extraordinarily sensitive
account of the coming of age of a girl (the author Pearl Goodman)
in the sixties, in the outskirts of Toronto, Canada. Growing up is
seldom a painless proposition and this account is no exception. In
this case, the experience was further compounded by the fact that
both Pearl’s parents were Jews and had been incarcerees in the
concentration camps of World War II.
This
paragraph from the Introduction says it all as regards the title of
the book.
“I
am trying to reconcile within me the bizarre extremes in a phrase
I’ve coined “from jackboots to Jack Benny”. The unison beat of
thousands of pairs of jackboots clicking and echoing on pavement so
many years before my time and the little girl that I was, listening
to the insipid whining of Jack Benny on TV”.
The
harrowing effects of the concentration camps had left their mark on
Pearl Goodman’s parents. Both had lost their entire families during
the Holocaust. In addition, they were both identity conscious Jews,
living in a non-Jewish country and had strong ideas of what was
Jewish and what was not. The experience of a concentration camp had
instilled in them, an overwhelming fear of something unknown lurking
in the background. This ever present, unspoken sense of dread,
percolated down to the growing child, Pearl who describes it as
follows:
“Growing
up, I couldn’t sleep at night because I was rocked by an
inexplicable, primordial fear. I was often alarmed, or at the very
least, confused by what my parents said and did”.
This
book appears to be some sort of a catharsis, where the
psychotherapist in Pearl Goodman emerges. That this is her first
book, shows the strength of the need for her to come to terms with
this childhood experience. She relates in this book, some key
incidents of her childhood in Toronto, which show how, she and her
six year older brother, tried to reconcile the relatively greater
freedom their peers enjoyed as part of the culture in Toronto, (where
flower power, peaceniks and free love were coming into vogue), with
the pressure of conforming to her parents idea of how good Jewish
children should behave. She also documents some instances of natural
teenage conflict with her parents that have been significant in her
life, and, in that context, also mentions the instances in her
parents’ lives which might have had a bearing on their behaviour at
that time.
It
would be wrong to say that the interaction with Pearl’s parents was
entirely negative. The good times also find a mention in this book,
like the time when she was gifted with a new bicycle. However, even
as she tells negative stories of her family, and of herself, the
entire narrative steers clear of self pity. This is one of the major
strengths of this book.
The
story ends with the passing of her parents. By this time, both Pearl
and her brother, have made their peace with their parents. Pearl is
also the primary caregiver to this bewildered duo who worked so hard
to raise their family.
Reading
this book, gave me a feeling of deja vu. A sense of the
commonality of the coming of age experience in a time and place,
requiring a subtle balance between the pressures of conformity to the
family tradition and the upsurge of new and modern value systems that
permeated Toronto at the time. In some sense, one undergoes a similar
catharsis, of one’s teenage years. This book is not a fast
read, but it creates an ambience that sits in the memory, long after
it has been read and laid aside.
Warmly
recommended.
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