Photo by David Aldera
Sara Gothelf Bloom is the author of the new novel Just Enough to Start Over. She spent many years working at the Heidelberg Opera in Germany, and now lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What inspired you to write Just Enough to Start Over, and how did you create your cast of characters?
A: At the time of writing Just Enough to Start Over, I’d been living and working in Germany for almost 30 years. It was a time when Germans of my generation were reviewing the role of their parents and grandparents in the Second World War.
As a singer of Yiddish songs, I toured the country and my concerts often included songs of the ghettos and KZ camps. I became interested in understanding how ordinary people—Jews, Germans, Russians—caught in a time of historic catastrophe rebuilt their lives following the War.
My main characters, the Dubrovsky family, are apolitical until the wave of terror flooding their country threatens their existence and they are forced to leave. As refugees, their survival depends upon finding the strength to begin new lives.
Q: The writer Jay Parini said of the book, “This beautiful and deeply moving novel takes us through a very hard time in history, but there is so much soul on display that one can only rejoice.” What do you think of that description?
A: Jay Parini is a professor, a poet, and the author of several wonderful books including Benjamin’s Crossing, an extraordinary historical novel. What do I think of his description? A positive review from him was truly a reason to rejoice!
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The theme of resilience has always interested me. How does one begin to heal from adversity, from terrible loss? What personal qualities help move us from suffering?
Max Beckmann, one of several historical figures who appear in the novel, continued to work in exile, producing hundreds of paintings after his reputation and livelihood were destroyed. The Dubrovsky sisters and their fictional cousin, the Austrian expressionist Marie Louise von Motesiczky (like Beckmann, an historical figure), are artists as well.
In exile, although little of their material comfort remains, they haven’t lost their artistic sensibility or their will to create. This is who they are and what they need, and it’s enough, just enough to start over.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: Doing the necessary research for the novel was great fun. The characters’ lives span the entire 20th century in five different countries.
In Mannheim, the Dubrovsky sisters’ birthplace, I found several accounts of the city during the War. The Berlin Art Library was the source of an excellent biography and the catalogue raisonee of Marie Louise von Motesiczky. (This comes with a warning—once one begins to learn about her family and early 20th century Jewish life in Vienna, it’s very difficult to stop.)
For Russian history, I read Konstantin Akinsha’s Beautiful Loot. His account of the Soviet army’s Trophy Brigade—also historical characters—became the basis for the plot dealing with plundered art.
The 42nd Street Library in New York provided memoirs by refugees who’d lived in Shanghai, the Dubrovskys’ interim landing place, and newspaper articles from the time of the fascist dictatorship in Argentina. For these last two segments of the novel, I was also able to interview personal sources.
Especially? All of it!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Although the novel’s main characters are Jewish, their history inseparable from Jewish history, my intention was to have the Dubrovskys stand for those who build new lives following historical trauma. With that in mind, I hope Just Enough to Start Over will speak to a larger community.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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