Subject: THE RESURRECTIONS by Simon Louvish

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 21:41:56 GMT

THE RESURRECTIONS by Simon Louvish
      Four Walls Eight Windows, ISBN 1-56858-014-2, 1995, 215pp,
                               US$18.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
                    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     The last book I read from Four Walls Eight Windows publishers was
Octavia Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER, and then Butler went on to win the
McArthur Award.  While I don't think Louvish will follow, it does seem that
Four Walls Eight Windows is a publisher that science fiction fans should
watch.

     This is an alternate history, based on the premise that Rosa Luxemberg
survived to lead a successful Communist revolution in Germany in 1923.
Because of this, the major National Socialist (Nazi) leaders never gained a
foothold and emigrated to the United States instead.  By the Sixties they're
pretty old, but Hitler's sons are already into politics.

     The first problem that strikes the American reader is that Louvish (a
Scot raised in Israel) seems to think that Presidential elections take place
in years *after* years divisible by four (e.g., 1961).  That's when the
inaugurations take place; the elections are in the years divisible by four.
This occurs more than once, so it's not just a typo.  And there are typos,
such as "hynotists" instead of "hypnotists" on page 26.  And there are some
other typographical oddities: a reporter spells words from an interview
"nooclear" and "plootocratic" in order to make the interviewee seem
uncultured, but that is precisely how those words are pronounced.  Louvish
has another character consistently spell "carcass" as "carcase" for no
apparent reason.

     I found the book strangely compelling.  I think Louvish assumes a
greater level of influence for the exiled Nazis than would have occurred,
but he draws an interesting picture of a Nazi-influenced United States which
has a certain surrealism to it.  He also looks at changes around the world:
in England, in Israel, in Poland, in Greece, and in China.  Not
surprisingly, much of this book is from a Jewish point of view, and perhaps
that is what helps me connect with it.  My biggest complaint would be that
the ending, which I suspect was supposed to be a surprise, wasn't, at least
not to me.  Still, even that is making a philosophical or psychological
point of sorts, and serves as the cap for the novel as a whole.

     In short, this is a somewhat peculiar alternate history, written in a
somewhat unusual multi-first-person style.  It is not for everyone, but for
some it will have a certain indefinable appeal.

     I do like the note at the beginning after the introductory quote from
T. S. Eliot saying, "All other quotations in this book are from texts not
published in our time stream."

     Though everywhere else the title is given as THE RESURRECTIONS, on the
back of the title page the cataloguing data gives it as "Resurrections from
the dustbin of history" (with no leading definite article).  This is
apparently the title under which a slightly different version has appeared
elsewhere.

     If your bookstore doesn't have THE RESURRECTIONS, you can order it from
Four Walls Eight Windows, 39 West 14th St. #503, New York NY 10011.

%T      The Resurrections
%T      Resurrections from the dustbin of history
%A      Simon Louvish
%C      New York
%D      September 1994
%I      Four Walls Eight Windows
%O      hardback, US$18.95
%G      ISBN 1-56858-014-2
%P      215pp

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness and courage; it does not need a
regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence
by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.  -- Bertrand Russell