The Hours Count

I guess I just don't care for Cantor's modus operandi - taking a tragic piece of Jewish history, speculating “what if?” and adding a touch of romance to sweeten the story. Her previous book asked “what if Anne Frank's sister Margot had survived the concentration camps and was living under an assumed name in America?” Her new novel is based on the true story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the only American citizens executed for espionage, but makes the nameless neighbor who watched their children when they were arrested into the main character, Millie Stein. Cantor complicates Millie's life by adding an autistic son, a cold and selfish Russian-born husband, and a mysterious protector. Millie befriends Ethel Rosenberg and has a sideline view of the activities that lead to the Rosenbergs' arrest and eventual execution, but unfortunately she doesn't make a very compelling narrator because she doesn't have a clue about what is really going on, and her understanding of the issues is very simplistic - her insistence that Ethel can't be a spy is based entirely on the fact that she's a good mother.

Millie finds comfort and perhaps more with Jake, a psychologist whom Millie meets at a party in Ethel and Julius' apartment. He offers to help treat Millie's autistic son, charges her nothing, and lives in a sparsely furnished apartment, and yet she thinks nothing of the fact that he asks her lots of questions and always seems to be there right when she needs him. Her naivete is more annoying than sympathetic.

The period details about Jewish life in late 1940s/early 1950s New York City are interesting, and the prevailing attitudes towards Millie's autistic son are heartbreakingly accurate (her doctor says it's her fault because she doesn't love him enough; her husband and mother think he should be institutionalized). But I think I'd rather read a real account of the Rosenberg case than this fictionalized and romanticized lightweight version of a sad chapter in American history.