paperback edition (2006)

Christian House, “Five Amber Beads by Richard Aronowitz: Old guy for sale: nice patina, slightly worn”, Independent on Sunday, 9 April 2006: At a key point in Perfect Strangers, Stephen Poliakoff's TV drama, a young man scans the various oddballs congregating at the reunion of his sprawling Jewish family and notes: "If you dig hard enough there are at least three great stories in any family." With Five Amber Beads Richard Aronowitz has drawn on his own Jewish legacy and dusted off just such a treasure from the vaults of his family's past: a long forgotten tale of Holocaust survival. By turning this into fiction he has created a fine debut novel that marks him out as a writer with a singularly pictorial style. At the opening of the book Charley Bernstein is an art expert in distress. After being bowled over by a yellow cab he lies marooned on a Manhattan hospital bed with his legs in traction. Company comes in the frail form of a septuagenarian amnesiac called Christopher Street (named after the road on which he was discovered with head injuries). They form an odd couple but Charley recognises the human worth of this old man: "In some senses Christopher is a work of art. Fashioned by time, by an unknown hand, circa 1920... European in origin. Nice patina, slightly worn. A good investment for any discerning collector of people."When Charley is discharged he takes on the authentication of a Modigliani in the Middle East while pledging to return and spring Christopher from the ward and his blank memory. This present-day saga is peppered with entries from the wartime diary of Charley's Great Uncle Isy. These form a litany of deprivation and monstrous cruelty, first in a labour camp and then the hell of Auschwitz. The two narratives, separated by nearly 60 years, are blended together, linked by Isy and Christopher's shared desire for an understanding of personal identity in the face of overwhelming trauma. Whether it is entirely believable that Charley would help Christopher to such an extreme, and criminal, extent is questionable, although this is a novel that revolves around the kindness of strangers, with random compassion frequently making the difference between hope and despair, life and death, in Isy's account of the camps. Where Aronowitz really succeeds is in dazzling the reader with startling imagery, sometimes using broad strokes to capture the world at war while in others narrowing his focus to human mannerisms with the precision of a draughtsman. Aronowitz knows the art world milieu particularly well having worked as an Impressionist and Modern art researcher at Sotheby's. The role of cataloguing masterpieces is one of detection: pinpointing the moment that Picasso doodled to the roar of the bull ring or Pollack traded a drip painting for the less abstract pleasures of a crate of beer and then mapping the work's trajectory from its origins to the auction room. Aronowitz uses the same skills to trace the secret provenance of his characters and in doing so infuses them with a greater understanding and a context for their existence. It's an effective way of dealing with such infamous events. After several cinematic treatments, and the literary success of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, one might wonder whether fiction has anything new to say about the Holocaust. Through his shimmering use of the language of art Aronowitz has shown that it has.   John Sutherland, “In from the wilderness”, Financial Times, 19 May 2006: Richard Aronowitz’s Five Amber Beads is another first novel, and a good one. Charley Bernstein, the narrator, is an art detective who tracks down paintings stolen by the Nazis. His mother came to England as a Kindertransport refugee and married an Englishman. Charley has assumed his mother’s Jewish surname (”amber” in German). In New York, after an accident, he wakes up in a ward with an old man who has lost his memory. He is European, perhaps German, and was clearly involved in the second world war. But how? Charley adopts “Christopher” and procures a passport for him in the name of his Jewish grandfather. They both go hunting their lost identity.The narrative follows three convergent tracks. One is the murky provenance of a Modigliani painting, now in Israel. The second is the gradual uncovering of Christopher’s mysterious past. The third is the diary of Charley’s great-uncle, an Auschwitz survivor. Everything finally links, as in the amber necklace that is Charley’s relic of his mother. A postscript confirms that Five Amber Beads is as much autobiography as fiction - which is how it reads. Very effectively. Rachel Hore, “Original researches”, The Guardian, 29 April 2006: Questions of identity inform this tender debut. Narrator Charley Bernstein, a London art whizz hired to investigate the legal ownership of paintings offered for sale, is holed up in a New York hospital following a road accident. There he befriends an elderly fellow patient, "Christopher", who was scooped up off the street with neither papers nor memory. Back on his feet, Charley decides to help the confused man, not least because he, too, is researching his own origins. His mother Eva, a German Jew who travelled to England on the Kindertransport in 1939, has recently died. From among her papers emerges a secret diary written in a labour camp by the only family survivor of the Holocaust, her uncle Isy. Haunting extracts from the diary are interwoven skilfully with Charley's reflections as he and his wife accompany Christopher on a journey into the past. Familiar subject matter, perhaps, but the writer's distinctive poetic voice offers a welcome fresh perspective. Simon Baker, “A Choice of First Novels”, The Spectator, 15 July 2006: Amnesia plays a role in Richard Aronowitz's début, too. In Five Amber Beads Charley Bernstein, an English art expert in his thirties, spends time in a New York hospital after being hit by a car. There he meets 'Christopher Street', an elderly patient who was found semi-conscious on a sidewalk, with no witnesses around to provide a clue as to how he got there, no identification, and, worst of all, no memory (his 'name' happens to be that of the place where he was found). Charley and Christopher become friends, and when Charley recovers and departs for England, he agrees to help Christopher in any way he can. The first of the novel's two strands involves Charley's attempts to deliver on his promise. He gets hold of a fake passport for Christopher (who may not apply legitimately for a passport since he does not know his own personal details), and plans his illicit escape. The second strand concerns a diary written by Charley's great-uncle Isy, who was interned in a concentration camp during the second world war but, thanks to his leadership qualities, was given a supervisory role over his fellows. Though separated by 60 years, Isy's and Christopher's quests for identity are closely bound, and Aronowitz portrays with elegance and thoughtfulness what it means to lose one's sense of self. Margaret Studer, Wall Street Journal Europe, 29th December 2006: ... a poetic novel based in the art world... Five Amber Beads is a first novel by Richard Aronowitz, a restitution specialist at Sotheby's in London The novel caught my attention because restitution of art confiscated by the Nazis during World War II has become a major area of interest as more works are returned to heirs, many of which subsequently come up at auction. Mr. Aronowitz tells the story of a young art consultant's friendship with an older man who has lost his memory. The art consultant is an expert in determining if an artwork has been stolen by the Nazis, and in the book, he examines a work by Amedeo Modigliani for a New York dealer that he identifies as stolen. The character's mother was a Jewish refugee from the Nazis who came to England, and one of her few possessions was a necklace of five amber beads, which reflected the history of the family. Through the art consultant's research into his family, the importance of keeping a memory of the past comes graphically alive. Told in almost poetic language, the novel contributes to our understanding of the human need for restitution. Jewish Book World, New York, winter 2006: Five Amber Beads alternates chapters to tell two interesting stories, both of which deal with memory. Charley Bernstein, an Englishman, meets and befriends an elderly man, Christopher, who has total amnesia. Charley has inherited his uncle’s diary, written during his time in a labor camp during the Third Reich. His interest in researching his past by meeting up with an old family connection in Israel who can tell him more about the diary parallels his work as an art historian researching the provenance of a certain Modigliani painting that is up for sale. He takes Christopher along with him to England and Israel in the hope of triggering Christopher’s memory, so that he can regain his own past. Aronowitz’s style is descriptive and haunting, and though Five Amber Beads is a quick read, it does not have a neat ending. This novel is based on an actual diary and the author’s real desire to discover the truth of his past, which was kept from him by his mother. Donald Weber, “Anglo-Jewish Literature Raises its Voice”, 2007 (online): “…Richard Aronowitz’s beautiful memory novel, Five Amber Beads, [is] inspired by his foreign-born mother’s “refusal to bow to the tight-lipped path through life of her adopted country.”