A great premise that's left undevelped in The Iron Tracks

In the end, I'm really not sure what to make of Aharon Appelfeld's short novel The Iron Tracks (1991). Put simply, it's a narrative by a man who survived the Holocaust and internment in various prison and work camps in Eastern Europe when he was a young man; the narrator - much like the author - escaped from a camp and survived in Eastern Europe till the end of the war, in the process forgetting his native language and separated from his parents (so far very much like AA). The narrator has, apparently, been traversing Eastern Europe - Austria, specifically - in an annual, yearlong circuitous journey visit a series of small, rural railroad outposts, for 40 years - perhaps also like AA in a figurative sense, as he spent the next 40 postwar years "visiting" the ravaged European landscape through his writings. About a third of the way through the novel the narrator informs us that his goal in his journey is to track an (ex) Nazi, Nachgtigel, who ran the prison camp where the narrator's parents were killed. This is a great basis for a plot, but AA makes little of it. About halfway through the novel, we learn that narrator makes this annual journey in search of Jewish artifacts that turn up for sale at various country fairs and markets; he buys these and sells them to a collector at a good mark-up. This is an opportunity for AA to give some depth and shading to the narrator's character, but AA does not take this opportunity. In other words, AA has established here a basis for a novel, but he opts for shading and understatement rather than development. I'm a great fan of short fiction and short novels, of efficiency in narration, and in narrative by suggestion and nuance, but there are times when a novel, such as this one, feels unfinished - as if the author had a contract to hit 200 pages and when he got there he mailed it in. For example (semi-spoiler-alert): The narrartor (Erwin) does track down his nemesis, Nachtigel, toward the end - once he learns the town where N now lives it proves easy to find him - he spots N walking alone in front of his house early one a.m., engages him in some conversation (falsely flattering N, telling him he's a military hero to those in the village), and then shoots him in the back. End of story; no great scene by any measure; and then the narrator moves on to another location. As noted in previous posts, AA seems to me adept and skilled at creating a narrative premise, but he also seems indifferent to narrative development and character development - at least in the little of his work that I've read.

To order a copy of "25 Posts from Elliot's Reading: Selections from the first 2,500 blog entries," click here.