“Makeup Tips from Auschwitz. How Vanity Saved my Mother’s Life” is a story of remarkable courage in the face of adversity. It is also a story of one very glamorous mom.
Mordecai Richler and Philip Roth detailed how the melting pot Americanized immigrants. This memoir is the story of a Hungarian refugee family whose chutzpah and moxie allowed it to survive and thrive in a strange new environment.
It is also the story of the rich threads and struggles that bind a unique mother-son relationship.
Meet Olga, Auschwitz prisoner A-25057 , aka Mom. A fearless, dramatic and unpredictable maverick. An original.
Exposing the souls of a family for all to see, Makeup Tips from Auschwitz has an unsettling candor reminiscent of humorist David Sedaris and essayist Augusten Burroughs.
Like the Oscar-winning film, Life is Beautiful, the memoir revisits the Holocaust with rays of light in the darkness.
It is a story of a family’s cultural collision and delightful dysfunction. With the growing pains of Shtisel, the earthiness of The Simpsons and the fierce family loyalty of The Sopranos, these newcomers from Hungary defy authority. They figured out early on that conventional values were not enough. It was their moxie that allowed them to succeed.
Schmooze with the passing parade that includes John Lennon, Elizabeth Taylor and Crystal Nacht. You will laugh out loud as you meet a cast of supporting characters who redefine eccentric: the 50-minute therapist, the psychic rabbi and a superstitious hypochondriac named Paris.
Once you get to know these mutineers from the mainstream, you will want to organize an intervention. Or at least a Passover Seder.
The memoir has been described as poignant, addictive and unpredictable by readers who sampled chapters of it on Facebook.
In addition to the bookstores in Montreal it is available online around the world in soft cover, hard cover and Kindle on Amazon. Also online at Barnes and Noble.
Audiobook read by Tommy Schnurmacher coming soon.