Solomon Kugel and his wife, Bree and their son have moved
from Brooklyn in an old farmhouse in Stockton, New York. Nervous, fearful and
bit odd, Kugel is disturbed by the tapping noises coming from the attic. He has
hope that it’s nothing but mice, and not the arsonist who is attacking various
farmhouses around Stockton. But he is surprised to find that it’s neither mice
nor an arsonist, but an old woman typing on a laptop; an old woman that just
happens to be Anne Frank.
Kugel is, of course, surprised, and author Aslander laments “while
there’s never a good time to find Anne Frank in your attic, this was a
particularly bad time” for our protagonist. As mentioned, the Kugels are recent
transplants from New York City to the countryside. To help pay for the
farmhouse, they take on a tenant, who becomes nosy when he reminds Kugel that
he’s paying for the attic space, but is living in another room, next to Kugel’s
own mother, who is pretending to die and who believes, as a Jew, she must
suffer for all the millions who died in the Holocaust because she lived a very
good life. When Kugel considers calling the cops about his unwanted Holocaust
survivor who everyone thought was dead, he can hear his mother voice asking him
“What’s the matter, you didn’t have Dr. Mengele’s number?”
The gist of the tale is, as Anne Frank has spent decades
writing a novel, would her “fans,” both Jewish and those who are not, see her
differently had she really survived the Holocaust. Is she only famous, in the
end, because she died there? Would anyone care about her diaries had she lived
to see them published?
This is, in the end, an absurdist tale, written with some hilarious
and biting satire. It is filled with guilt and pessimism, yet it never wallows
too much in either of them, with Auslander handling the tale with aplomb. It’s
a great humorous read, and kind of reminded me of what Mel Brooks might have
done after History of the World, Part One.
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