Irene Dische gets extra credit for the staccato writing style of The Empress of Weehawken. The brisk—almost breathless—sentences add to the inherent humor. The book is fiction, but it's narrated by the author's Catholic grandmother, affectionately known as Mops, a nurse who marries a Jewish doctor, Carl Rother, in 1930's Germany. Carl converts to Catholicism, but it doesn't stop the SS from barring Aryan citizens from seeking Carl's medical attention. His wife's relatives help Carl emigrate to the U.S., where his poor command of the English language stymies his attempts to pass the pathology board exam that will enable him to practice medicine. Also in danger is Carl's half-Jewish daughter Renate, a headstrong teenager who refuses to conceal her lineage in Nazi Germany. After Carl gets his M.D. but loses his job prospect, his wife and daughter join him in New York. There Renate marries Dische, known primarily by his last name and for "hogging the eccentricity limelight." I know this doesn't sound like it should be funny, but the narration makes it so. Oddly enough, the humor diminishes when Irene herself becomes a more central character.
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