An influx of post-Holocaust novels has been flooding the American book market recently. Perhaps a reminder of harder times is appropriate during our current economic crisis, or perhaps the horrors of World War II provide the lurid details our society craves. In the case of Johanna Reiss, however, bestselling author of the World War II memoir The Upstairs Room, the time is appropriate to write one last Holocaust memoir because the generation that actually lived through the war is dying out. In A Hidden Life: A Memoir of August 1969, Reiss deals with the ghosts of her past and discusses the secret behind her best-selling children’s book, The Upstairs Room.
After years of encouragement from her husband, Reiss visited her hometown in the rural village of Usselo, Holland, where she spent close to three years hiding in a farmhouse attic from the Nazis. After spending weeks in Holland with her husband and two young children, Reiss completed the research that would eventually become her bestselling novel, The Upstairs Room. The book was published to critical acclaim and won the Newbery Honor, among other awards. It is oftentimes compared to Anne Frank’s diary, and Reiss has been called the “Anne Frank who survived”.
Reiss finally gained the courage to tell one dark experience of her life when she published The Upstairs Room. Another secret, however, she chose to conceal from the public until now. A Hidden Life deals with the death of Reiss’s husband Jim, who committed suicide at 37 years of age while Reiss was still in Holland researching — leaving behind two young daughters and a bewildered wife. He did not leave a note explaining why he killed himself, and few signs indicated that he was terminally depressed.
A Hidden Life attempts to deal with the questions that suicide seems to provoke: Could it have been prevented? How could loved ones not have seen the signs? How could he leave behind his two young daughters and an unemployed, immigrant wife after encouraging her to conquer the demons of her past? Reiss, 76, tries to answer these questions by flipping through past and present, recalling details about her husband: his interest in science fiction and fantasy, his problem with sleepwalking, the job he despised at an insurance company.
In layers, Reiss reveals darker secrets about Jim’s past, like his mother’s struggle with insanity and eventual death. Reiss addresses Jim directly, saying, “You were a good son, Jim, you were not responsible for her death. You did not cause it, nor what she was like before” — although she admits that she hardly ever talked to Jim about his mother.
The book can be confusing at times, jumping from memory to memory, woven together in Reiss’s present explanations. The jagged nature of the writing, however, is appropriate for a book so emotionally raw and powerful, and there is no denying that Reiss’ writing proves to be both captivating and intense. There are no definitive answers in this book, yet it is a worthwhile read, delving into the mind of an extraordinary woman who lays bare everything for the reader to experience.
For me, the most disturbing part about the novel was remembering its relation to The Upstairs Room, which ends with the 10-year-old Reiss jubilantly dancing in the sunlight while watching a parade of American soldiers, finally free from the dark ghosts of the Nazi soldiers that once ruled her village. While it seems appropriate that Reiss would not include her husband’s suicide in a children’s novel, it is disquieting to think that the jubilant young girl would never quite be free of her demons and would live her life dancing from the grasp of one haunting memory to the other.
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