Facing the Music [Paperback]

A dramatic, heartwarming novel!

In a Jewish boarding school deep in the English countryside, Zeesie Lipstein harbors fantasies about her future that both her mother and her teachers tell her are completely unrealistic. Then--through a series of strange occurrences, mysterious meetings and astonishing discoveries--Zeesie realizes that a very different future awaits her.

Binding: Softcover
Size: 6" x 9"
Pages: 288
Language: English
Publisher: Judaica Press
ISBN-10: 160763192X
ISBN-13: 978-1607631927

Facing the Music [Paperback]
By: Eva Vogiel

About the author:
Eva Vogiel, who has written masterfully about this girls' boarding school in many other popular books, including Invisible Chains and Friend or Foe?, weaves a suspense-filled story. Find out what happens when it's time for Zeesie to "face the music!"

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Twelve-year-old twin Jewish girls separated at a young age during WWII are reunited in this fairly flat story from Vogiel, author of Invisible Chains and Friend or Foe? In 1949 England, Zeesie Lipstein fantasizes a career playing the violin, but in light of her mother's strained circumstances, she must be content with a few lessons. Neither she nor her mother know that her lost twin, Ad?le Lejeune, is alive in France, unaware that she is Jewish and forced by her lazy "parents" to labor over violin lessons and play lucrative professional venues to support the family. When Ad?le conveniently stumbles across her twin's Jewish school while performing at a concert hall nearby, the ending is a foregone conclusion. The prose is problematic, with too many qualifiers and a copious use of exclamation marks (one page alone contains 13). Much of the story is "told," rather than "shown," and it's a stretch for the reader to believe that Zeesie knows nothing of her lost twin, since they were already three at the time of separation. The text is liberally salted with Hebrew/Yiddish terms that add color but are not always defined in the otherwise helpful glossary provided. Although most of the characters are underdeveloped, Vogiel admirably allows Ad?le's imposter-mother to become more multifaceted toward the end of the book. Overall, however, the lackluster writing and contrived twins-separated-at-birth plot make this novel a disappointment.
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