Glass Bridge

Written in hushed tones that convey immediately the fear of discovery, this penetrating Holocaust memoir chronicles five wartime years spent in hiding by Stella, a young Dutch artist who assumes the identity of a dead woman. As Maria Roselier, she falls in love with and preserves the memory of the man who risked his own life by providing her with Maria's papers. Only by indirection do we learn that Stella's family was taken away by the Nazis; she escaped by climbing to the roof. The narrative contains no overt horrors--only the image of the insubstantial bridge of the title, Stella at one end, her adored father at the other, walking toward each other but never meeting. She cannot rid herself of the part of her that became Maria, and after the war she spends years searching for the house where her alter ego grew up. The novel's unobtrusive voice, the remembered family scenes, the single, doomed love affair contrast poignantly with the tragedy that lies beneath the quiet surface. Minco has created a novel about the Holocaust that, like Anne Frank's diary, differs from most others. (Apr.)