Reviews

Mixed feelings about this fictionalised autobiography. Seems to be light on the fiction purely because as a 10 year old Austrian Jew on Kindertransport, Segal's memory is mixed. However, the narrative follows her actual British experience and foster families for which she has the facts.

Whilst being a fascinating account of a familiar larger story but an under-written personal experience, it is presented in a monotone. Perhaps the whole experience was too overwhelming to superimpose the emotional tangle, but it does read as very matter of fact.

I read this as the book was re-issued for the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport. It sits uncomfortably against the hostility and checks imposed on migrants today.

holly_golightly's review

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dark hopeful inspiring sad

4.25

avitalgadcykman's review against another edition

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5.0

Other People's Houses (1964) is a memoir-like novel. An Austrian Jewish ten-year-old girl takes a transport on a train to England, ten months into the Second World War, in 1940, with other few hundreds of children refugees. She moves from family to family and from house to house even when her parents finally manage to flee to England as well. The story, told from the point of view of the girl as recalled years later, shows how the war, Nazism, Austrian and English society have affected her world view, self-perception, and how they hardened and shaped her. Her age, gender, ethnicity and history mark her as an outsider and an observer and lead to a pained sense of reality. She survives her ordeal by defining and articulating the world around her, tracing its conventions and mechanisms. The original traumatic event, the persecution in Austria, takes its toll on each character, including her, her mother and her father, each in different ways. The insightful descriptions of their struggle fit well into the study of difference, trauma, and ways of transformation.

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