Editorial Content for The Rest Is Memory

There have been countless histories, novels and films relating the horrors of the Holocaust. However, when done well, these narratives can still shock readers or viewers out of contemporary complacency and compel us to contend with this all-too-recent atrocity in new and important ways. That's the experience many will have when they pick up Lily Tuck's new book, THE REST IS MEMORY.

Tuck explains in an author's note that the germ of the novel came from an obituary she encountered about a decade ago. It was of a man named Wilhelm Brasse, a Polish photographer who spoke German and was enlisted to take photos of arriving prisoners at Auschwitz. The 40,000 pictures he took included three of Czesława Kwoka, a 14-year-old Polish Catholic girl. Those photographs, which were among several accompanying the obituary, haunted Tuck. But when she set off to learn more about her subject, she was able to gather very few specifics.

"The book's division into short vignettes, shifting rapidly among various subjects, enables readers to really focus on each of these well-crafted anecdotes --- and to pause for reflection and renewal as needed."

But in addition to being a dedicated researcher, Tuck is a talented novelist, gifted with the power of imagination. In THE REST IS MEMORY, she brings these skills together in a stunning testament to a too-short life and the resilience of the human spirit. Czesława came from the region of Zamość in southeastern Poland, the area where Hitler embarked on a campaign of "Germanification," intending to entirely replace the Polish population with Germans. Jews in the area already had been rounded up years earlier. The campaign expanded in 1942, targeting especially the area's Catholics, including clergy. This was the climate in which Czesława and her mother found themselves on a transport to Auschwitz, where they forged friendships, struggled for survival, and found strength through the power of memory and imagination.

That description might sound a little saccharine, but don’t get me wrong. THE REST IS MEMORY has few happy endings, and Tuck pulls no punches when it comes to describing, in wretched detail, the atrocities that Czesława both witnessed and was subject to. Although the verifiable details of her life are few, Tuck intersperses the better-documented lives of others throughout the narrative. They include the stories of some, such as Jan Tomasz Zamoyski and his wife, Róża Zamoyska, who use their power and privilege to save hundreds of children from extermination, and others, such as the morally bankrupt Rudolph Höss and his wife, Hedwig (the inspiration for the recent film The Zone of Interest), who profited from the camps and their prisoners.

The book's division into short vignettes, shifting rapidly among various subjects, enables readers to really focus on each of these well-crafted anecdotes --- and to pause for reflection and renewal as needed. Tuck uses present tense for almost all of the narration, a fascinating choice that, along with the nonlinear narrative, creates the impression that everything --- including Czesława's childhood in rural Poland and her nightmarish reality in Auschwitz --- is happening simultaneously. This technique helps cement the novel's focus on the power and fallibility of memory, as the characters relive stories and memories as a coping mechanism for surviving the present.

Readers should --- and undoubtedly will --- carry THE REST IS MEMORY with them for a very long time.