482 minutes.I was all prepared to like Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse. Really. But it's the sort of historical fiction, written in letter form, no less, that can't help but hit you over the head with historical exposition.
Rifka's voice is also unconvincing- I'm not sure how you communicate a unique voice in English that is supposed to be writing in Yiddish, but this wasn't it.
It is based on the true story of the author's aunt's immigration to the United States, and Hesse tells it (with blunt historic exposition) so as to give the reader an idea of what immigrants in general went through in the early part of the 20th century. Great as a history lesson. Not so great as literature.
I much prefer Hesse's Witness, a novel about the Ku Klux Klan's activity in a New England town, written in blank verse. Each character is distinct and unique. Each poem is a snapshot of a character at that point of the story, and historical details are given more subtly.
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