| A truly original and unusual plot |
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I recently read a novel that had a novel (forgive the pun) premise – but I ask you now, when was the last time you read a piece of fiction with a truly original and unusual plot? We’ve got vampires everywhere, whodunits where we all know from page 1 who did it (and we couldn’t care less), international espionage, ghost stories, political thrillers and apocalyptic gloom-and-doom tales. To tell you the truth, the New York Times best-seller list contains no surprises and no new names — and probably nothing I really want to read unless it shows up in my local library or in a used book sale. Kaplan’s novel is what I’d call a speculative historical novel. “Speculative” fiction, per se, usually refers to a book dealing with a futuristic scenario. In House of Ghosts, however, the author offers us an intriguing “What if?” in regard to past events — namely, at the time of WWII. And what he asks is, “What if the Allies had attempted to disable the Nazi death camps in their bombing missions over Europe?” Would it have even been possible? How would such a scheme come about? Who would carry it out? And might it — just maybe – have been successful and saved thousands and thousands of lives? House of Ghosts, however, is about much more than that. Its cultural context is complex and engaging. The author captures a time, a place, an era, a zeitgeist. Its characters are Americans, from disparate social classes and ethnic backgrounds, who perceive the global war of the 1940s and their relationship to it in startlingly different ways. The reader slips effortlessly into their daily lives and experiences a piece of history personally — from a tough Jewish kid from Brooklyn using his dubious underworld connections to do good on an international level…to an Ivy League preppie who finds himself caught up in intrigues whose consequences he’s not prepared to deal with…to a disillusioned, broken-down NJ detective who, decades later, unexpectedly becomes heir to explosive information about a noble humanitarian plot that failed. Kaplan has a keen understanding of human nature as well as of the period of 20th century American history he is focusing on. House of Ghosts is one of the most uniquely conceptualized, fascinating novels published in recent memory and well worth your reading time. It’s available online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other internet booksellers. I promise that you won’t be disappointed.
–phoebe kate |
