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Not Me A Novel Michael Lavigne Books

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Not Me A Novel Michael Lavigne Books

Wow, I couldn't stop reading this engrossing story about a man examining his own life, and his father's life, as his father lies dying in a nursing home. The beginning is light, even funny at times, but as the story unfolds it becomes darker and bleaker, and yet Lavigne wisely inserts little pockets of humor because, face it, we always seek humor in our lives, and the more heavily we fall, the more we need it.
The story revolves around a son's quest to discover his who his father really is. Is he the outstanding Jewish man he always assumed his father to be? Or is he a German war criminal who worked in various concentration camps as an accountant, carefully tracking each shoe, each gold filling, each watch taken from Jewish victims?
Here's the plot in a nutshell: Michael Rosenheim is a comic who admits that he's only funny because he's sad. He's divorced and has one son, who lives back in San Francisco with his ex-wife. Rosenheim is in Florida, caring for his dying father, whom he knows as Heshel Rosenheim, though he's most likely his father is really Heinrich Mueller.
Michael Rosenheim learns this through reading old notebooks given to him by his father (who also has dementia, by the way). The notebook entries are fascinating from a historical perspective, though they begin to drag by the middle, when readers could easily become overly-eager for the story to unfold, to move faster. We want to know who the father really is and if forgiveness or redemption is ever possible.
And this is the question of the book: Can we forgive the ones we love for being who they are? Can we forgive them for their pasts? Their mistakes? Their blind and ugly truths?
It's a bittersweet story, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered in the end, yet this somehow seems right. It seems perfect, actually.
I highly recommend "Not Me."


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Not Me A Novel Michael Lavigne Books Reviews

Story, told perfectly. I have not read a book in one sitting for a long time, but I did this one. It was done right - the whole story flowed and just seemed true and real. I loved this book!
This was a book club selection. I think it is interesting and creative fiction angle to a holocaust story. It is not only about the holocaust but the atrocities of WWII are the elephant in the room of this story. It stretches the imagination to wonder-can people change? Is it possible, or are we wired by nature and nuture to be as we are. The book is amateurish at times. Questions are unanswered-Where did the journals come from? Who was visiting his father in the hospital? Did he have another family? I think the author should answer these questions. Maybe he is setting the stage for a sequel.
Good story with a predictable, but unusual plot. An unusual story, but once plot is revealed, the end is predictable. The mystery of who was providing the diary was not well developed. They story provides hope that an individual who was part of terrible events can turn their life into something good.
I read a lot of WWII books and the description of this book really caught my attention. The Father in this book is an accountant and works in a concentration camp. Fearing the end is near, he shaves his head, tattoos himself and pretends he is one of the Jews needing saving from this camp. What an interesting story line.....I just wish the rest of the book could have been as interesting. The book had no likeable characters in it and ended with too many unresolved issues for my liking. All in all it was "OK" book at best. I was very intrigued by this story line, but felt it fell short in many ways. I will likely not seek out more books by this author.
After finishing reading this book I was in the state of shock, as like after reading a good and powerful book. I consider it to be one of my favorite books I have read in the last ten years. One thing surprises me though it has been translated in many languages, but not in Hebrew, even though it deals with the Jewish subject. On several occasions, while traveling to Israel, I was asking at their central book stores if they have a Hebrew edition of it, to buy it to my friends who do not read English. And each time, after giving me a negative answer, the clerks often would wonder why I'm so anxious to get it. After explaining what it was about, they then asked me for the correct English name and the name of its author while telling that they would definitely order it from .
This is a thoughtfully conceived novel about identity, guilt and recreating oneself to ultimate redemption. Towards the end of WW11, an SS administrator changes his identity to save himself and he remains in that identity for the rest of his life to keep hidden. His new persona opposes all his original beliefs. The novel alternates between this man's journal story and his son's reaction to reading his father's story. In turn, the son experiences his own identity crisis, particularly since he is already going through turmoil due to a family split-up. This book is a complex achievement which challenges the reader on a philosophical level to think about humanity's worst flaws, the capacity for forgiveness, plus the helplessness we have in controlling where ours lives go and in deciding whether we should love the unlovable or not.
An interesting and promising premise discovering oneself, reluctantly, through one's own father's diary. The narrator/protagonist threads his way through his father's devious past from the Holocaust to Israel to America, surviving as a Nazi collaborator, German Jewish refugee, opportunistic Arab impersonator on the way to becoming a secular Jew. What is real and what is true in the diary, and what is the son's own identity in relation to his own son, his ex-wife, his dead sister, his mother, and the Jewish community he lives in. The story does not entirely escape improbability, nor does it quite reach the level of allegory. Underdeveloped or irrelevant characters clutter the progress toward the protagonist's enlightenment. I found it difficult to develop any empathy with any of the characters, except the son of the narrator whose part is very small. I think the author is aiming to pose compassion as a human dilemma; but, for me, the story is a little too cluttered to put the reader square in that place.
Wow, I couldn't stop reading this engrossing story about a man examining his own life, and his father's life, as his father lies dying in a nursing home. The beginning is light, even funny at times, but as the story unfolds it becomes darker and bleaker, and yet Lavigne wisely inserts little pockets of humor because, face it, we always seek humor in our lives, and the more heavily we fall, the more we need it.
The story revolves around a son's quest to discover his who his father really is. Is he the outstanding Jewish man he always assumed his father to be? Or is he a German war criminal who worked in various concentration camps as an accountant, carefully tracking each shoe, each gold filling, each watch taken from Jewish victims?
Here's the plot in a nutshell Michael Rosenheim is a comic who admits that he's only funny because he's sad. He's divorced and has one son, who lives back in San Francisco with his ex-wife. Rosenheim is in Florida, caring for his dying father, whom he knows as Heshel Rosenheim, though he's most likely his father is really Heinrich Mueller.
Michael Rosenheim learns this through reading old notebooks given to him by his father (who also has dementia, by the way). The notebook entries are fascinating from a historical perspective, though they begin to drag by the middle, when readers could easily become overly-eager for the story to unfold, to move faster. We want to know who the father really is and if forgiveness or redemption is ever possible.
And this is the question of the book Can we forgive the ones we love for being who they are? Can we forgive them for their pasts? Their mistakes? Their blind and ugly truths?
It's a bittersweet story, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered in the end, yet this somehow seems right. It seems perfect, actually.
I highly recommend "Not Me."