The Coat

A beautiful and thoughtfully crafted novel, full of sensitivity and emotion that gets in to the readers conscious, showing how reading and writing truly can heal.

The Coat is an extremely well written book. It is about Seth, who at his bar mitzvah is shown a coat he is to inherit from his grandfather. It is the coat of a Nazi officer. Seth asks repeatedly how he got the coat and why he kept it, but gets no real answer. Seth grows up and becomes a writer, and the coat comes into his possession at the age of 23. He continually wonders why his grandfather would have kept that Nazi coat, however he holds onto it out of respect for his grandfather's wishes. The book is then split. Some chapters detail Seth's life and experiences, and some chapters tell stories Seth has written, each featuring his grandparents and other relatives, and each story describes a different way in which the coat may have been acquired.

This novel is a work of art. The sufferings of Holocaust victims, even after the war, are so well told and woven together that they become alive and the reader can really begin to understand the experience. The individual stories within the story are all great ideas of different ways the coat could have been acquired.. The struggle of Seth to come to terms with his beliefs, his traditions, and his family culture is also well written. When Seth does indeed realize why his grandfather kept the coat and passed it down, the reader has an "AHA" moment along with him.

I also appreciated the glossary of terms in the back of the book.

The only thing I didn't like was Seth's girlfriend, who I felt was quite abusive. However, that did not take away from this five-star novel.