A Brilliant Life (Rachelle Unreich, Hachette)

A Holocaust story is never an easy read, but A Brilliant Life has such a harrowing prologue that it throws the reader right into the thick of it, so be prepared. Stories of ageing and dying parents can be tearful at times, too, but there’s hope and beauty in this ‘brilliant’ biography. Journalist Rachelle Unreich has vividly captured her mother Mira’s bright spirit, both through her accounts of Mira’s earlier life and through the modern-day first-person moments interspersed throughout the book. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1927, Mira was 17 when she was taken to the first of four concentration camps, surviving each one thanks to people who, in her words, ‘helped me without getting benefit from it themselves’. Unflinching information is included about Mira’s experiences in Plaszow, Birkenau, Auschwitz, and on the arduous death march to Ravensbrück in Germany, when even her inimitable spirit seems about to break. Well researched but never dry, the book shines when describing Mira’s family and her capacity to see light through horrific darkness and notice the moments of serendipity. After a long and captivating life, Mira is living with terminal cancer in her home in Melbourne in 2016, and her daughter interviews her while she still has time. We are brought into the family fold and invited to join them in Mira’s final days, enjoying the richness of the storytelling the way we might at a Shabbat meal.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Hannah Cartmel is an editor, former bookseller and co-founder of The Rag & Bone Man Press Inc. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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