A review by avitalgadcykman
Other People's Houses by Lore Segal

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.