From the Publisher
"Blending the horrors of war with the supernatural, [Shankman] creates a literary landscape that is strangely mythical and distinctively her own." ---Sarai Walker, author of Dietland
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"Blending the horrors of war with the supernatural, [Shankman] creates a literary landscape that is strangely mythical and distinctively her own." —Sarai Walker, author of Dietland
The Rumpus
Shankman presents a typical German-occupied Jewish town in an atypical way: through the lens of several non-Jews and their individual transformations, or lack thereof. We come away with something new in literature—a full portrait of a war-torn Jewish town, where a nimble application of the magical gently veils the harsh realities.
Naomi Ragen
"In The Land of the Armadillos is a moving collection of beautifully written short stories that readers of Jewish fiction will celebrate. Not to be missed.”
Maggie Anton
Populated with monsters and heroes [human and perhaps not], but mostly with ordinary people caught up in horrific events they neither understood nor controlled - this series of intersecting stories drew me in completely, making me read them again to find all the connections I missed the first time. The writing is fantastic, and I marvel at Shankman's literary skills.”
Gloria Goldreich
With unflinching prose and flashes of poetry Helen Maryles Shankman spirits her readers back through history to the Polish hamlet of Wlodawa during the dark days of Nazi occupation. Horrific reality and soaring fantasy meld in serial stories that include an avenging golem, an anti-Semite who shelters a Jewish child, brutal SS officers who lay claim to 'their own Jews' and an unlikely messiah "whose breath smelled of oranges and cinnamon." That scent will linger in the memory of readers as will the haunting stories in which barbaric hatred is mitigated by the reflection of a survivor who reflects that "love is a kind of magic." There is, in fact, literary magic in these well told tales."
Historical Novel Society
What might otherwise have been an unbearable recounting of inhuman atrocities Shankman transforms through a prism that is by turns forthright and tender, oblique and intimate, brutal and ethereal...Though each story stands beautifully on its own, it is the completed tapestry of interwoven details that finally reveals the entire picture and provides the full emotional depth of the collected stories; the sum is unquestionably greater than the parts...The author’s greatest accomplishment is in leaving the horror to speak for itself, and instead giving voice to the enchantment.
The New York Journal of Books
Following in the footsteps of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Shalom Aleichem, Helen Maryles Shankman is an exquisite storyteller of early 20th century Eastern European Jewish life...Readers of In the Land of Armadillos will encounter vibrant tales of extraordinary people, good and evil, in a twisted, macabre life. Here, the old rules are no longer valid. Subjected to inhumane conditions, with brutality and death around every turn, Shankman’s characters alternately perpetrate and combat hatred while sliding inexorably toward a dark and surreptitious future.”
Sarai Walker
Every story in this remarkable collection reveals Helen Maryles Shankman’s talent for surprising, disturbing and enlightening her readers. Blending the horrors of war with the supernatural, she creates a literary landscape that is strangely mythical and distinctively her own. These stories haunted me for days after I finished reading them.
The Jewish Week
This is a book lover’s book, filled with beautiful language and textured scenes…There’s no forgiveness in these stories, but explorations of human nature. With bold originality, Shankman has created her own literary blend of history, folklore, fantasy, myth, spirituality and truth.
The Chicago Jewish Star
“In the Land of Armadillos has the magical elements its title suggests…The title story, with its sense of detached irony, mixed with tragedy and fantasy, simply takes your breath away…The collection ends on a positive note that succeeds in being hopeful without sentimentality. These are beautifully crafted, moving stories, haunting in the dark complexities they portray.
The Chicago Tribune
Richly rendered...Well-shaped and often word-perfect, boasting a clear narrative structure and a sure, signature voice…"
Jewish Book Council
One of the most original and consistently captivating short story collections to have appeared in recent years…Experienced together, the collection reads as a sophisticated orchestration. So tightly interwoven are its themes, characters, and grim events that it is hard to imagine any one apart from the others…An absolutely dazzling triumph…Shankman’s skill for description paints the setting in brilliant detail…Many stories reward with ironic twists and indelible surprises…In the Land of Armadillos is a singularly inventive collection of chilling stark realism enhanced by the hallucinatory ingredient of top-drawer magical realism, interrogating the value of art, storytelling, and dreams in a time of peril and presenting hard truths with wisdom, magic, and grace.
APRIL 2016 - AudioFile
Magical realism meets grim reality in this superb collection of short stories. Narrator Elizabeth Wiley delivers this unique addition to the canon of Holocaust literature without a flaw. Wiley’s ability to juxtapose Shankman’s descriptions of Nazi atrocities with the serenity and beauty of the natural world is expertly understated. In the title story, Tobias, the Jewish writer/illustrator of a popular children’s book, is forced to paint a mural for the son of an SS officer who is too brutish to understand the metaphor within the painting. Each lyrical story merges the ordinary with the horrific, and Wiley makes each one poignant without sentimentality. Many of Shankman’s stories are based on those of real Holocaust survivors, and Wiley handles the surprising twists and ironic turns with subtle grace. Must listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-01-20
A portrait of the small Polish town of Wlodawa during World War II, this collection of linked short stories is both moving and unsettling. Shankman, the author of one previous novel (The Color of Light, 2013), brings Wlodawa to life through this set of stories told from different points of view. Like Joyce's Dubliners, this book circles the same streets and encounters the same people as it depicts the horrors of Germany's invasion of Poland through the microcosm of one village. The narration slips in and out of different characters' minds, a reminder that there is no single story of the Holocaust—there are so many stories, so many points of view in just one little town. Shankman's prose is inventive and taut; she writes of the "tea-with-milk color" of a boy's skin and a young girl "watching the silvery bellies of enemy planes fly in tight formation overhead." She also sneaks in a bit of magical realism in the forms of talking animals and mysterious, inexplicable natural disasters, suggesting the sheer kismet of surviving the war. Her writing is simple and matter-of-fact, never maudlin or sentimental. She describes the senseless humiliations and merciless killings of Wlodawa's Jewish citizens bluntly, because that's how they happened. Even so, the collection is bookended by stories told from the perspectives of Nazis; in both cases, the story's protagonist is conflicted about his job. Shankman doesn't let these figures off the hook for their deeds, however reluctantly performed, but her inclusion of these narrative voices alongside those of Jewish villagers displays both an aesthetic and a moral inquisitiveness. It also demonstrates how quickly and thoroughly war erases the will of the individual and how much easier it is to condemn a nation in abstract than any one person. A deeply humane demonstration of wringing art from catastrophe.
