The first 65 pages of this novel I was wanting to put it down, to put it back on the shelf and admit my mistake. The protagonist is a ghost writer by trade, and the novel contains excerpts from a novel he is writing with the intent of publishing it under his own name. I thought the novel within the novel was terrible, but I am thinking that was how I was supposed to feel about it. I struggled, though, to understand the relevance. It was to be his great accomplishment, the establishment of his own identity. Perhaps that was the point: the contrast between his personal history and what he was trying to accomplish.

Like some other readers, I found the switching back and forth between 3rd person and 1st person distracting and confusing. I like structure that adds to the story or provides the right foundation on which to build the story, not something that is arbitrary. It was probably not arbitrary, but I could not discern the purpose. It felt like an experiment gone bad.

The base story eventually grabbed my attention. The sense of the uprooted was conveyed in many ways, including the decision not to bring many of the subplots to closure. There was enough that was intriguing about this novel to think that I might really enjoy some of his other work. ( )

Review: The Time of The Uprooted by Elie Wiesel.

I thought the novel was well written but filled with unjust hope and despair. I have read some of Elie Wiesel’s non-fiction and got through the rough parts but this story hit a lot of triggers for me at this time. The story kept me in deep thought while reading about the main character, Gamaliel’s low life thoughts and perils that he brought on to himself. Yes, I feel he was a Hungarian refugee, he had no home, no nation, and he never did achieve anything because of lack of happiness. Gamaliel chose that life, only knowing four other lost souls that he hung around with at a coffee shop through his adult life. Where they friends..? Not really, they all got together on occasions to discuss, argue, share stories but not any buddy, buddy emotions or behavior. They were refugees, living a separate life from each other, with different viewpoints and it was just an unusual coincident that they meet when they moved to America.

Gamaliel was the narrator throughout the book and I thought his character was somewhat of a low life person. Elie Wiesel created the environment subdued to capture the reader’s vision of this man as someone who has no real life. Gamaliel’s parents gave him up at five years old, when they knew they were being deported to the concentration camps during the invasion of Poland to a woman named Ilonka. She was a Christian cabaret singer who also was a prostitute in order to stay alive. She could never take the place as his mother but he did over the years care for her. Once he was of age he went out on his own but his behavior and attitude got him in trouble so he went to America knowing no one but still with a very low self esteem and began his life unhappy and depressed.

That seemed to be his nature throughout the novel. His whole life it seemed he was seeking something but would he ever recognize it when he found it? He did get married, had two children but that ended because he wouldn’t let go of the past. As his children got older that started hating him with the help from their mother’s comments and abrupt hatred she had for Gamaliel. His life with women were unsettling from that point on so his state of mind was always filled with bitterness towards others and mostly towards himself until one day he met a doctor who introduced him to an elderly unrecognizable woman because of scars to her face and body, who was Hungarian. This woman was in a hospice and Gamaliel had a feeling he knew her but he could not recognize her and she hadn’t spoken in years and was near death. She finally lapse into a coma but Gamaliel kept visiting her in hopes to figure out who she was. The ending was like the rest of the book, sad but I felt a sigh of relief…..
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