Last Impressions
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- $199.00
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- $199.00
Descripción editorial
Shortlisted for the 2021 Leacock Medal for Humour
Longlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Awards
How can you say goodbye forever when you've left an important secret unspoken?
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," Zoltan said. "When I die, I'll leave my luck to you."
Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children. But as he faces the end of his life, he discovers a heartbreaking secret from the War that will ultimately bring the family together--or irrevocably disrupt it. Set in both mid-20th century Hungary and contemporary Toronto, this is a deeply moving novel that revels in the energy of its extraordinary characters. It is the story of lost love and newfound connections, of a father and his sons desperately reaching out to bridge an ever-widening gap...even as their time together ebbs away.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kertes (The Afterlife of Stars) delivers a bittersweet tale of a Jewish Hungarian survivor of WWII. Zoltan Beck immigrated to Toronto with his young family during the revolution of 1956. Now, in 2012, Zoltan's wife has recently died and Zoltan, who has colon cancer, is being looked after by his son, Ben, a teacher, and Ben's wife, Lucy. Ben is patient with his father, who is exasperating in his will to maintain his independence. Zoltan's travails in the present are interspersed with flashbacks to his experiences during the war, when he and his older brother, Bela, were transported to a forced labor camp where Bela's talent as a pianist earned them special treatment. But at war's end, Zoltan and Bela were separated. Bela's fate is finally revealed as Ben and a dying Zoltan travel to Budapest for a final reckoning with their family history. Kertes dramatizes the indignities faced by a person with compromised health, from having one's driver's license revoked to running into unexpected difficulties during a colonoscopy. Zoltan's hilarious and heartbreaking story is a satisfying blend of matters domestic and historical.
