The New York Times Book Review - Julie Orringer
…devastating yet unnervingly funny…Kertes's memories survived his own family's flight to Canada and have found expression in this inspired and deeply affecting novel. "I'm not asking for a story for the ages," Robert tells his Aunt Hermina. "I'm asking what happened to you." Kertes has given us both.
From the Publisher
"Devastating yet unnervingly funny....it's not every writer who can render a scene like this with such verisimilitude so many years after the fact....What is clear—and unquestionably lucky for us—is that Kertes's memories survived his own family's flight to Canada and have found expression in this inspired and deeply affecting novel. 'I'm not asking for a story for the ages,' Robert tells his Aunt Hermina. 'I'm asking what happened to you.' Kertes has given us both."
—Julie Orringer, New York Times Book Review
"The Afterlife of Stars is Joseph Kertes's masterpiece. Robert Beck, the young narrator, is absolutely captivating (and very funny!) as he takes us along on his terrifying journey."
—Miriam Toews, two-time Giller Prize finalist for All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness
"The Afterlife of Stars moved me more than any other novel I've read in recent memory. It hypnotizes. It delights. It shines on every page with a quiet, implacable, blanketing beauty-like a snowfall. Beyond all else, The Afterlife of Stars reaches into your chest and takes hold of your heart and does not let go, not even after the last page is turned. The Afterlife of Stars keeps shining on. What an exquisite novel."—Tim O'Brien, National Book Award-winning author of The Things They Carried
"The Afterlife of Stars is tender in its evocation of fierceness and wrenching in its rendering of two brothers' hunger to penetrate both the wonders and the awful secrets of a world that always seems just out of reach. It's memorably sad and surprisingly funny on the elusiveness of home and the intensity of family bonds."
—Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron
"We meet the Beck brothers at the very moment history lays its claim on them. Their bond is sure to become one of literature's great and sustaining relationships. Joseph Kertes writes with tremendous love for the idiosyncratic and passionate loyalties of family. With masterly concision, he expresses the trauma of an era. This is a book of remarkable scope and depth; unforgettable and deeply moving."—Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
"The Afterlife of Stars blazes with every single good thing that a work of fiction ever does or could do. It is brilliant. Radiant."—Richard Bausch, PEN/Malamud Award-winning author of Peace
"Agony, humor, and a boy's bewilderment and wonder coalesce in this glittering novel. Joseph Kertes evokes a vanishing culture with poignancy and love. His boy-narrator is a marvelous creation."
—D. M. Thomas, Man Booker Prize finalist for The White Hotel
"The Afterlife of Stars is a great adventure story, at once fantastical and true. And the inimitable Beck brothers allow us to see past the horrors of the world with a childlike precocity."—David Bezmozgis, Two-time Giller Prize finalist for The Betrayers and The Free World
"Exquisitely moving . . . Kertes is a natural storyteller who creates vivid characters that resonate on the page."—Elaine Margolin, Jerusalem Post
"A beautifully written story of brotherly love, family, and the intersection of history in the 20th century."
—Andrea Kempf, Library Journal (Starred Review)
"Kertes, who himself escaped Hungary after the 1956 revolution, delivers a fastpaced and taut narrative that captures how inscrutable the world's cruelties can be to the children who witness them. Stirring and haunting, The Afterlife of Stars memorably shows how the bonds of brotherhood stay strong in a crisis."
—Bridget Thoreson, Booklist (Starred Review)
"[A] fervent novel. Kertes (Gratitude, 2009), winner of the National Jewish Book Award, begins his newest work in his own native Budapest.... [protagonists] Robert and Attila are a winning pair of guides....Kertes' voice is a lyrical one, and his work is frequently moving."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Slender yet consequential...Part of what makes the book so compelling is its sympathetic portrayal of political refugees at a time when they are frequently misunderstood at best, and demonized at worst....But the beating heart of this book is the relationship between [protagonists] Robert and Attila, a remarkable pair of brothers whose bond goes beyond affection, beyond shared history, beyond blood. They are two young men who, once met, you'll never forget."
—Thane Tierney, Bookpage
Library Journal
★ 11/01/2016
In 1956 the Beck family flees Hungary. The Soviet Union has just sent in troops to quell a rebellion, and the Jewish Becks, who only survived the Holocaust through the assistance of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and his right-hand man, Paul Beck, are looking for a new life in Canada. The Beck sons, 13-year-old Attila and nine-year-old Robert, are very close, with Attila taking the lead and his brother following in his wake. On a stopover in Paris, Attila is convinced that their cousin Paul, who has been missing for a decade and was last seen in the city, is hiding here. Attila knows no boundaries as he opens his family's cache of secret letters and steals what he can to find his relative. However, the Soviets are also searching for Paul. VERDICT This follow-up to Kertes's National Jewish Book Award—winning Gratitude, which focused on Paul's efforts in the rescue of the Hungarian Jews during World War II, is a beautifully written story of brotherly love, family, and the intersection of history in the 20th century. [See Prepub Alert, 7/25/16.]—Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
MARCH 2017 - AudioFile
Two boys are at the center of this audiobook about a family that flees the Soviet crackdown that ended the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Robert, the narrator of the novel, is 9.8 years old; Attila is 13.7. Their flight, marked by both tragedy and comedy, takes them to Paris and to a deeper understanding of their family’s history and what the Nazis did to them. This is a powerful novel, but narrator Tristan Morris adopts a Hungarian accent for the dialogue. Rather than enhancing the audiobook, the accent is a layer of distraction that listeners have to cut through to find the story. Morris would have done better without it. G.S.D. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-10-05
Two boys flee the 1956 Russian occupation of Budapest.Robert and Attila (named for the Hun) Beck are brothers, ages 9.8 and 13.7, respectively, according to the ever precise Robert, who narrates this circuitous but fervent novel. Kertes (Gratitude, 2009), winner of the National Jewish Book Award, begins his newest work in his own native Budapest. It's 1956, and Russian soldiers have invaded the city to quash the Hungarian Revolution. With their family, the Beck brothers flee across the border, eventually landing in Paris. But their journey isn’t merely a geographical one. As they travel, Robert and Attila begin to uncover secrets about their Jewish family’s past. Those secrets revolve around a pair of mysterious figures: Raoul Wallenberg and Paul Beck. Here, Kertes is revisiting characters from his previous book, Gratitude, and perhaps for that reason, the material occasionally feels predigested. But Robert and Attila are a winning pair of guides. They are exposed to childbirth as well as to violence and death, experiences that are particularly dismaying for Robert, the wide-eyed younger brother. Meanwhile, Attila tries to make sense of things. Robert looks on as Attila grapples with skeins of tangled questions, which range in subject from the design of the human body to the meaning of God’s omniscience. He muses, “Did the Lord think up everything at once because he is omniscient? I guess I’m saying, how does that work—being omniscient, I mean? Did he start out, as a baby God, being somewhat omniscient? Did he start out as God of the Milky Way, only later to become God of the whole universe?” But when Attila and Robert ask their grandmother about the family’s wartime experiences, the boys are told: “News like that can wait.” There is, it seems, a limit to knowledge. Oddly, it is Attila’s flights of questions, and the final unveiling of those wartime secrets, that form the most vivid parts of this novel. On the other hand, the present day—1956, when Russian soldiers have beset Budapest—carries the watery tint of unreality. Kertes’ voice is a lyrical one, and his work is frequently moving, but long passages seem to wash by without fully convincing the reader they’ve actually happened.
