Eva and Eve by Julie Metz - Rajiv's Reviews

Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind
by Julie Metz

Release: April 6th, 2021
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Atria Books
Source: Suzyapproved Book Tours
Find it at Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N

The author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection returns with an unforgettable account of her late mother’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Austria and the parallels she sees in present-day America.

To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. Eve rarely spoke about her childhood. It was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except Manhattan, where she could be found attending Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera or inspecting a round of French triple crème at Zabar’s.

In truth, Eve had endured a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna. After her mother passed, Julie discovered a keepsake book filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to Eva’s ten-year-old girl. This long-hidden memento was the first clue to the secret pain that Julie’s mother had carried as a refugee and immigrant, shining a light on a family that had to persevere at every turn to escape the antisemitism and xenophobia that threatened their survival.

Interweaving personal memoirs and family history, Eva and Eve vividly trace one woman’s search for her mother’s lost childhood while revealing the resilience of our forebears and the sacrifices that ordinary people are called to make during history’s darkest hours.

About the Author:

Julie Metz is the New York Times bestselling author of Perfection. She has written for publications including The New York Times, Salon, Dame, Redbook, and Glamour. Julie has received fellowships at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. She lives with her family and two cats in the Hudson Valley.

You can learn more about Julie’s writing life on Instagram: @JulieMetzWriter and her website: www.JulieMetz.com.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads

Eva and Eve Review:

“Eva and Eve” is a beautiful heartfelt memoir about the author discovering her mother’s past in Austria at the time of the Nazis.

Firstly, I commend the way the story is structured. The author nicely divides the tale into four parts where we get a different timeline of accounts from various perspectives. I loved how the book was structured because it felt like reading the author’s keepsake book. The photographs also added personal touch, and I loved all the other details the author put into the book.

Secondly, I admire how personal the author when narrating the story. Part of the book is interesting in how she uses the clues and travels around Austria and Trieste to get more information on her mother’s past. But the other half is the gripping accounts that happened to the previous generations in the family when they had to escape from Austria. For me, some of the memorable moments were when the author searches for Donald or when she tours the Jewish museum in Trieste.

Moreover, I appreciated smaller moments to the story, like when Stelio tells her the woman who owned a shipyard. I also learned something new, like the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which I was unaware of before. The author also correlates the events during that era to our present life. For instance, she connects it to the unrest in society and how the recent pandemic also added stress.

Overall, “Eva and Eve” is a short yet powerful story that gives an insight into how people in that situation struggled and survived.