The Fortunate Ones: A Novel

by Ellen Umansky

Overview

A BOOKLIST BEST DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR

One very special work of art—a Chaim Soutine painting—will connect the lives and fates of two different women, generations apart, in this enthralling and transporting debut novel that moves from World War II Vienna to contemporary Los Angeles.

It is 1939 in Vienna, and as the specter of war darkens Europe, Rose Zimmer’s parents are desperate. Unable to get out of Austria, they manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport, and send her to live with strangers in England.

Six years later, the war finally over, a grief-stricken Rose attempts to build a life for herself. Alone in London, devastated, she cannot help but try to search out one piece of her childhood: the Chaim Soutine painting her mother had cherished.

Many years later, the painting finds its way to America. In modern-day Los Angeles, Lizzie Goldstein has returned home for her father’s funeral. Newly single and unsure of her path, she also carries a burden of guilt that cannot be displaced. Years ago, as a teenager, Lizzie threw a party at her father’s house with unexpected but far-reaching consequences. The Soutine painting that she loved and had provided lasting comfort to her after her own mother had died was stolen, and has never been recovered.

This painting will bring Lizzie and Rose together and ignite an unexpected friendship, eventually revealing long-held secrets that hold painful truths. Spanning decades and unfolding in crystalline, atmospheric prose, The Fortunate Ones is a haunting story of longing, devastation, and forgiveness, and a deep examination of the bonds and desires that map our private histories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062382481
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/14/2017
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Ellen Umansky has published fiction and nonfiction in a variety of venues, including the New York Times, Salon, Playboy, and the short story anthologies Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge and Sleepaway: Writings on Summer Camp.She has worked in the editorial departments of The Forward, Tablet, and The New Yorker. She grew up in Los Angeles, and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Editorial Reviews

…the ideas at its core are deceptively deep. The Fortunate Ones is a subtle, emotionally layered novel about the ways art and other objects of beauty can make tangible the invisible, undocumented moments in our lives, the portion of experience that exists without an audience but must be preserved if we are to remain whole.

The New York Times Book Review - Sana Krasikov

12/19/2016
When New York lawyer Lizzie Goldstein’s father dies in a car accident, she arrives in Los Angeles to go through his house—the house where, 20 years earlier, she hosted a party as a teenager and a priceless painting by Chaim Soutine, The Bellhop, was stolen. Lizzie has been carrying the guilt around for decades, and at the funeral she meets the original owner of the painting: Rose Downes. In 1939, Rose and her brother had been two of many Jewish children on the kindertransports during World War II who were evacuated from Vienna to England, leaving behind their parents, their home, and in Rose’s case, Soutine’s bellhop. The story unfolds in alternating chapters of Lizzie’s slow recovery from grief in L.A. and Rose’s coming-of-age as a refugee in London. The two stories meet in 2008 when the women, both settled in L.A., become friends, united by the missing painting. For both women, the painting comes to represent what might have been and the complex past. Umansky’s vivid telling of the scenes in Vienna and life in wartime London are lovingly juxtaposed against the modern angst of Southern California. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

THE FORTUNATE ONES is a rich and engaging debut. Ellen Umansky skillfully transports readers on from war-torn Vienna and London to present day Los Angeles and the journey is intriguing, memorable and worthwhile.

Pam Jenoff

Must-read.

Town & Country

With remarkable elegance and electric prose, Ellen Umansky has written a brilliant novel... I stayed up all night reading this book and it left me weeping, in awe of her gifts and, more than anything, so lucky to be alive.

Joanna Hershon

A debut novel that is written with the prowess and force of a veteran storyteller.

San Diego Jewish Journal

The restitution of art works stolen by the Nazis provides the background for this début novel....Umansky shrewdly avoids letting the issue of stolen art crowd out other aspects of the story, to which she gives a feminist tilt.

The New Yorker

Umansky’s multilayered novel asks the big questions — who are we and who are the people we love? What can we, and what should we, forgive? How does history write itself on our lives and our society? — with compassion, tenderness, and a deft touch.

Hanya Yanigihara

12/01/2016
Though 11-year-old Rose Zimmer hated leaving her parents, she and her older brother were transported from Austria to England in 1939 for their safety. For years, Rose was obsessed with a painting loved by her mother that was lost when her parents were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Decades later, in 2005, New York-based lawyer Elizabeth Goldstein is back in Los Angeles to attend her father's funeral. As a child, Lizzie had been fascinated by an odd painting in her father's house and still blames herself for its theft during a party she threw as a teen when her dad was out of town. So at the funeral, when she meets an older woman named Rose Downes who claims to be a friend of her father, she's stunned when Rose says her family had owned the painting back in Vienna. The scene is set for some major disclosures, but while alternating chapters relating Rose's transformation from girl to young woman to wife are appealing, the adult Lizzie's actions seem callow and less than sympathetic. VERDICT The journey the painting takes ends up being fairly pedestrian, and the denouement lacks the requisite drama. Umansky's debut holds promise, but the execution is ultimately uninspired. An optional purchase. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Library Journal

★ 2016-10-26
A missing painting connects the lives of Rose, a woman who escaped the Holocaust as a young girl, and Lizzie, a 37-year-old lawyer whose father just died.After Rose's parents put her and her brother on the Kindertransport from Vienna to England in 1939, she never saw them again. Also gone was The Bellhop, a painting by the expressionist Chaim Soutine. Over the years that followed, both Rose and The Bellhop separately found their ways to Los Angeles. The painting was purchased from a New York gallery by a wealthy eye surgeon named Joseph Goldstein, displayed in his steel-and-glass mansion overhanging a ravine in Los Angeles. When his daughter Lizzie, then 17, threw a wild house party when he was out of town, the painting, as well as a Picasso sketch, was stolen. Rose's husband read of the theft in the paper; she contacted Joseph. But Lizzie and Rose do not meet until Joseph's memorial service. By then, Lizzie's life has been as shaped by the missing Bellhop as Rose's has—for both, the painting's departure from their lives coincided with a brutal loss of innocence. Lizzie is powerfully drawn to Rose, trying to build their coincidental connection into a real friendship over coffee dates and movies, and you can see why. Despite all her losses—on top of the Holocaust, her adored husband has recently died—Rose is an elegant, smart, utterly direct woman who loves the films of Roger Corman, tolerates no fools, and has strong opinions on everything. Her boyfriend is a Bruce Springsteen maniac. It is his offhand question about the insured value of the stolen artwork that drives Lizzie back into the investigation. A few of the plot developments at the end of the book are a little awkward, but when's the last time you read a novel that didn't have that problem? Umansky's richly textured and peopled novel tells an emotionally and historically complicated story with so much skill and confidence it's hard to believe it's her first.

Kirkus Reviews

[A] beautiful debut novel. . . . The vivid characterizations make it hard to believe that this is Umansky’s first effort.” 

PureWow

[R]emarkable...One of Umansky’s many gifts to her lucky readers is the ability to illuminate the truly transcendent powers of art, but also its inherent shortcomings in the face of devastating loss. This is a stirring and ultimately uplifting debut.

Helen Schulman

A subtle, emotionally layered novel about the ways art and other objects of beauty can make tangible the invisible, undocumented moments in our lives, the portion of experience that exists without an audience but must be preserved if we are to remain whole.

New York Times Book Review

The characters in Ellen Umansky’s beautiful novel are haunted not only by loss but by the way one loss bleeds into another and reshapes the world... A profound and moving exploration of sorrow and reconciliation.

Jonathan Rosen

THE FORTUNATE ONES is like the melody of a song that you can’t forget. Its marvelous, utterly human characters will stay with you. In a story that spans decades and continents, Umansky takes readers on a journey that both challenges and affirms our notions of love, art, family, and sacrifice.

David Gillham

A beautiful and complex story . . . [that] questions who art really belongs to, and demonstrates how even one work of art can inform and transform lives irreversibly. . . . This novel is elegant, engaging, and smart.

Bustle

THE FORTUNATE ONES is a riveting, page-turning novel that investigates the true price of art and love and history. It is both magnificent in its sweep and intimate in its telling. And the end? It will take your breath away. Three cheers for Ellen Umansky’s perfect debut.

Jennifer Gilmore

Ellen Umansky is an absurdly gifted writer, and her masterful debut is so smart, so compelling, so emotionally and intellectually and morally complex, it will make you see the world in a completely different way. I loved, loved, loved this book.

Joanna Rakoff

The Kindertransport, the recovery of Nazi-looted art, family ties, and adjustments to great loss...in Umansky’s first novel, they’re brought together in an original and tremendously moving way....[Umansky] sensitively addresses the complicated issue of survivor’s guilt and leaves readers with a sense of hope.

Booklist (starred review)

[A] gripping mystery about the fate of one painting and the two very different women who’ve spent their lives mourning its loss...A lush, haunting debut.

Anna Solomon

Umansky’s multilayered novel asks the big questions — who are we and who are the people we love? What can we, and what should we, forgive? How does history write itself on our lives and our society? — with compassion, tenderness, and a deft touch.

Hanya Yanagihara

A touching novel that will appeal to readers who enjoy his- torical drama with a mystery that spans the years.

Historical Novel Society

Two women generations apart, beautifully drawn...[Umansky] reminds us of the rape of art by the Nazis, placing her emphasis on a Chaim Soutine painting...We mourn its loss through the eyes of the two women. So here is a novel where history is important and writing is excellent.

Fort Wayne News Sentinel

A haunting story based on historical fact.

Detroit Jewish News

The restitution of art works stolen by the Nazis provides the background for this début novel....Umansky shrewdly avoids letting the issue of stolen art crowd out other aspects of the story, to which she gives a feminist tilt.

The New Yorker

Must-read.

Town & Country

A haunting story based on historical fact.

Jewish News

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