Hadley Freeman House Of Glass-The Story and secrets of a twentieth-century Jewish family

"Researched with diligence and written with love, it triggers the same shock of recognition that comes from colourised film ..."

"Freeman is a determined and eloquent detective."

"There is sadness here and righteous anger, but, crucially, Freeman eschews the air of melancholy and fatalism that is so often a feature of depictions of the Jewish beau monde ..."

"But Freeman provides a moving and frightening picture of the ways ordinary fates are mangled by the machinery of politics, war and hate."

"An affecting and ambitious writer, as well as an exacting historian, Freeman tackles anti-Semitism, Jewish guilt and success...Without her ancestors' 'extraordinary force of personality,' their bold actions, even those resulting in lasting grief, we wouldn't be fortunate enough to have Freeman or this exceptional book."

"No story about the fate of a Jewish family in Thirties Europe can be read without a sharp sense of peril and the reader's fears over which of Sala's siblings will survive the Holocaust is part of what makes House of Glass so breathtakingly compelling ..."

"Larger than life, gregarious, resourceful, passionate, tough, quick to anger, this was a man who worked himself – and his siblings – out of near destitution, ending up as a regular patron of the most elegant nightclubs of Paris, a gifted couturier and an even more gifted hustler ..."

"reeman's technique is chronological, as she follows one sibling and then shifts to another, which allows readers to learn all the stories ..."

"It makes for wider appreciation, but to others, perhaps deliberately, it just isn't heimish."