A short review of Great House by Nicole Krauss

This is an enchanting novel about love, loss, anxiety and desperation.

The focus of the novel is a large oversize desk with 19 drawers, one of which is permanently locked. It is described as:  "This desk was something else entirely: An enormous foreboding thing that bore down on the occupants of the room it inhabited, pretending to be inanimate but, like a Venus' flytrap, ready to pounce on them and digest them, via one of its many little terrible drawers."

There are four narrators, each with their own chapters;  three of them have some connection to the desk.

The fourth narrator is a bitter, irate, disconsolate Israeli father who is desperately seeking reconnection with his son Dov who took off for England to pursue a career as a judge; now, he leaves his job behind and returns to Israel to be with father. He is aloof and insentient which irritates his dad.

The novel begins with Nadia a writer who relates that her boyfriend split taking all the furniture. Through a mutual friend, she connects with a Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky who is returning to Chile and needs a place to 'store' his huge desk. So she gladly accepts the proposition

We later learn that Varsky has disppeared under the Pinochet regime.

Nadia has had the desk for several decades and then one day a woman shows up at her doorstep saying she is Varsky's daughter and wants to take her dad's desk back to Israel with her. Without hesitation, Nadia acquiesces.

I leave it to the reader to fill in the gaps and make connections as needed.

Suffice it to say, that nuances in language left me with the desire to read this remarkable novel a second time.