A Fifty-Year Silenceby Miranda Richmond Mouillot
Miranda is a young woman growing up in America. Her grandparents are
Holocaust survivors--her grandmother has moved to America but her grandfather still lives in France. Miranda's childhood was troubled, haunted by scary stories seldom told; frightful images of the destruction of her family and ancestral home. Not that she heard much about these things from the people closest to her, but she knew they happened--she was a child of no small imagination.
Her grandparents are completely and bitterly estranged. Just to hear the name of his wife would enrage her grandfather into bitter silence or hateful words. The grandmother also had no love spared for her husband, only invective. But at some point in Miranda's life she encouraged her to go visit him, meet him for herself. Miranda thought he wasn't so bad and was puzzled by their continued enmity.
Later Miranda become an unwitting mediator between them over an old house in the south of France that they still owned. He has been doing the upkeep of it but now wants to sell it, but her name is on the deed. Before she will consent, the grandmother decides to take a trip and look at it. Miranda is dragged along.
You have to live your life forward. Go eat some lunch.
And that's all I am going to tell. It's a lovely, lovely memoir. I will hold back from the full five stars on account of how long it took me to finish it--it's not a long book, but once put down, a bit hard to pick up again. But I recommend it heartily with both hands.
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