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Title: To the land of the cattails (Perennial fiction library) by Aron Appelfeld ISBN: 0-06-097115-0 Publisher: Perennial Library Pub. Date: 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Final Trip Home
Comment: Most of the books I have read by Mr. Aharon Appelfeld have dealt with movement, the movement of an individual, or in this case, a Mother and her Son. This work differs as it is at the beginning of The Holocaust, and we read not of survivors attempting to travel and regain their previous life, but of individuals heading straight into the Genocide.

This is one of the briefer of this Author's novels, however it does not lack depth in plot, or in its characters. The story takes place in the summer of 1938, the infamous trains have been transporting the Reich's victims, and this is one of the more interesting pieces of the story to unravel. The Country that was their home was an early entrant into the Nazi Sphere, and their travels took them not away from, but rather toward the planned insanity that was taking place. The circumstances are also more complex as the Mother has left an abusive marriage to a Gentile. The only child is a Son, who though Jewish by Religious and Nazi Law, appears not to be, and their reception along the way demonstrates this. As they approach their ultimate destination the Mother also wavers from proclaiming her Son a Jew or a Christian.

The return trip without the waiting trains is still destined to be a painful conflict. This first return home after marrying outside her faith guarantees conflict with her Family at a minimum. As the trip progresses the mood darkens, however the Mother seems much more aware than her Son.

When the final approach to her hometown is all that is left after weeks of travel, the Son wakes to find he has been left, his Mother has gone on without him. And from this point on the story seems to pose the question of whether or not the Mother was having her Son deliver her to this danger she could not have been ignorant of, as she states that Jews are not well-liked as they get closer to her birthplace.

The Son pursues his Mother, and meets many others on their way to the trains, or others that wait for them. I am confident that many will interpret the story differently, but it seemed that the Mother knew what the future held, and wanted her Son to deliver her believing he would not be suspected of being Jewish.

Like all his books the storylines are not shallow or simplistic. Even when Mr. Appelfeld writes about the Holocaust that the he survived and his Mother did not; it still is not just about that instant of tragedy. Read a work of his twice and interpretations can change,