"During the war, we kept our Jew in a box." So begins The Man in the Box, Thomas Moran's debut novel. The Jew is Dr. Robert Weiss, an Austrian doctor on the run from the Nazis; the box is a small space built into the back of a hayloft owned by Herr Lukasser, an Austrian farmer. In the course of his two-year confinement, Dr. Weiss's only contact with the outside world is through Lukasser's son, Niki, whose life the doctor saved many years before, and Niki's blind girlfriend, Sigi. To these two teenagers he imparts the story of his life, fantastical tales conveyed in whispers through the wooden wall of his cell. Writing in spare, clean prose, Mr. Moran captures perfectly the tumultuous interior life of children on the verge of adulthood: the petty cruelties they visit on one another, their sexual stirrings and inchoate longings of adolescence. In the case of Niki, the added burden of the secret he must keep makes this passage particularly perilous--to himself, his family, and the Man in the Box.

From Publishers Weekly
With gentle and unflinching emotional honesty, this first novel by New York journalist Moran concerns a 13-year-old boy who must care for a Jew-"the man in the box"-his father hides from the Nazis. In the midst of neighbors and friends in his Austrian village who may or may not know his secret, young Niki Lukasser must learn to do the extraordinary while burdened with an ordinary, conflicted heart. When Dr. Robert Weiss unexpectedly appears on the Lukasser doorstep one day in 1943, the family is faced with a request that is difficult to refuse. Weiss saved the life of Niki, their only child, several years earlier and now is pleading that the favor be returned. After Niki's father briefly weighs "whether the debt he has incurred was heavy enough for the payment that now seemed to be required," he seals Weiss into a tiny hidden room he has built in the loft of his barn. During the ensuing two years, Weiss's physical and emotional survival become the responsibility of Niki and his first love, Sigi, a blind girl. Though a tale of Holocaust survival, this is also the story of many friendships: between a worldly doctor and the bewildered children who tend to him yet look to him for guidance; between a sensitive young man and a perceptive young woman yearning to discover themselves; and among the sometimes stoic, sometimes irrational villagers, who have known each other all their lives. Although he can be pretentiously philosophical at times, Moran is a sophisticated storyteller who subtly explores the way ordinary people, even children, are capable of both good and evil, betrayal and sacrifice. BOMC and QPB alternate selection. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In a small village in Austria during World War II, Dr. Robert Weiss, a Jewish doctor, shows up unexpectedly at the house of the Lukassers (a "righteous gentile" family) beseeching refuge from the Nazis. He is well known to the family, having saved the life of their only son, Niki, years before by performing an emergency appendectomy. Lukasser knows the dangers of harboring a Jew; nevertheless, he builds a false room in his barn, not bigger than a box, where Weiss hides for more than two years. A warm relationship develops among the doctor; Niki, who brings him food; and Sigi, a blind girl, and the children endlessly discuss the situation. Eventually, the secret begins to take its toll on the family. The result is a test of courage under stress and of what good people feel they must do. Sensitive and evocatively written, this is an impressive debut for journalist Moran. Recommended for large collections.?Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Lee Siegel
. . . Thomas Moran expresses his respect for Joseph Roth and Gregor von Rezzori--and ultimately his curious yet admirably ambitious book is in part a homage to these two writers. . . . Attached to every instance of altruism, bound up with every amiable or affectionate or romantic impulse in this novel are the beasts of prejudice and self-gratification. It is as if Mr. Moran has turned Schindler's List on its head.

From Booklist
Journalist Moran takes on a daunting subject--the Holocaust--through a narrow but encompassing focus in this first novel. The man who knocks on the Lukassers' door in the Austrian Tirol village of Sankt Vero is Dr. Robert Weiss, who years before saved the life of the Lukassers' infant son Niki by performing an emergency appendectomy while staying as a paying guest in their home; he has escaped transportation to the death camps. The narrator, Niki, is a teenager when Weiss returns, the only one of the five children born to taciturn grocer Lukasser and his nervous wife to live into adolescence. When Lukasser, despite the fears of his wife and mother, constructs a tiny room--"the box"--in the barn for "their" Jew, Niki and his friend Sigi, a blind girl, become Weiss' lifeline. Over the next two years, relationships shift and change: between Weiss and his benefactors/jailers, within the family, and among the villagers. A Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection; expect interest. Mary Carroll

From Kirkus Reviews
First-novelist Moran, who edits W magazine, has chosen an unconventional debut subject: a childhood encounter with the shadow of Nazism and the consequences of ethnic prejudice, set in Austria during WW II. In the village of Sankt Vero, shopkeeper Martin Lukasser is approached by a Jewish doctor, Robert Weiss, in flight from the Nazis and seeking refuge. Years earlier, Weiss had performed an emergency appendectomy on Lukasser's son Niki. In return, Martin now constructs a tiny concealed room, scarcely larger than a box, in his barn and hides the doctor in it for two years, until the war ends. Weiss's only ``visitors'' are the now adolescent Niki and the latter's best friend Sigi, a blind girl. The pair listen raptly as ``our Jew'' tries to pass the time by telling the story of his life (and, more reluctantly, of his loves). This is, therefore, a coming-of-age novel, short on plot and of interest mainly for the smoothness of Niki's present-tense narration and for Moran's characterizations. Dr. Weiss is, as the teenagers see him, opaque; Niki is believably sensitive and observant; and Sigi is especially vividly drawn--she isn't at all long-suffering or saintly, and there are streaks of irritability and cruelty in her that, oddly enough, endear her to us. Moran writes amusingly of adolescent sexual curiosity and confusion, presenting the Nazi menace as more inconvenience and annoyance than threat to the beleaguered villagers who must billet Wehrmacht soldiers in their homes and safeguard their daughter's virtue. Unfortunately, the story's impact is blunted by its reliance on several clich‚d characters, the most glaring of which are a taciturn father whose stoic demeanor masks an embarrassing secret, and the beautiful, lonely schoolteacher whom obtuse townspeople mistake for a seductress. The novel invites, absorbs, but does not fully convince the reader. A commendable first effort, then, but flawed by some flat secondary figures and a rather slow pace.(Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
To thirteen-year-old Niki Lukasser, World War II seemed very far away. Then a man appeared at the Lukassers' door. A man who had come to their small Austrian town years before. A doctor who had saved Niki's life. A Jew - now asking to be hidden . . . The Man in the Box is Thomas Moran's elegant first novel, a vivid and evocative coming-of-age tale in a time when even a child's innocence is not beyond the nightmare of war.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
With an engaging cast of diverse, fully realized characters, Thomas Moran's debut novel of ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances explores a dire subject from a fresh direction.

Passing through the small Austrian village of Sankt Vero, Dr. Robert Weiss once saved the young Niki Lukasser when a ruptured appendix threatened his life. Years later, the Jewish doctor reappears at the Lukasser's door and asks them to return the favor. Though in 1943, the war still seems impossibly far away to the villagers — there is more concern over the scarcity of coffee, and the scandalous behavior of the unmarried schoolteacher than the plight of the Jews — Niki's father honors his debt and builds a secret room into the barn loft, one meter wide, three meters high, and four meters long. Here Weiss will wait out the duration of the war. The task of actually keeping the good doctor alive falls to Niki and his constant companion, Sigi. Though blind, it is Sigi who wholeheartedly embraces the romantic nature of their undertaking. "You're our Jew, and we have to save you" she tells the doctor. But shut up in his coffinlike box, it is no longer clear to Weiss whether he is being saved or buried alive, whether the Lukassers are his protectors or his jailers.

Within this dehumanizing framework, the parallel story of Niki's coming of age and sexual awakening unfolds. Niki's pubescent anxieties and confused feelings for Sigi contrast starkly with the isolation and weltschmerz experienced by the man in the box. The world Dr. Weiss describes through the wall is an altogether more complexaffairthan Niki had previously imagined, and he becomes haunted by a sense of "of something gathering that will soon change everything I've ever known." —Greg Marrs

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Niki Lukasser's father has walled Dr. Weiss into the barn loft. His box is one meter wide, three meters high, and four meters long. Hiding Dr. Weiss seems like an adventure to Niki. At first. But the family's secret weighs on them. Mrs. Lukasser becomes "nervous." Mr. Lukasser withdraws. Care and feeding of Dr. Weiss fall to Niki and a blind girl - Niki's best friend, Sigi. Niki and Sigi straddle two worlds. In their adolescent world, they are discovering the limits of adult life, and the possibilities of each other. In the secret world they share with Dr. Weiss, they have power - a life depends on them. That is both gratifying and bewildering. As the psychological state of Dr. Weiss ebbs and flows, Niki and Sigi are entranced by the stories of his worldly life in a Europe very different from their own. He shows them how to dream beyond their village, beyond the war. They are beginning to understand compassion and respect. And from the inside of his box, Dr. Weiss is gradually coaxing them into adulthood.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

With gentle and unflinching emotional honesty, this first novel by New York journalist Moran concerns a 13-year-old boy who must care for a Jew-"the man in the box"-his father hides from the Nazis. In the midst of neighbors and friends in his Austrian village who may or may not know his secret, young Niki Lukasser must learn to do the extraordinary while burdened with an ordinary, conflicted heart. When Dr. Robert Weiss unexpectedly appears on the Lukasser doorstep one day in 1943, the family is faced with a request that is difficult to refuse. Weiss saved the life of Niki, their only child, several years earlier and now is pleading that the favor be returned. After Niki's father briefly weighs "whether the debt he has incurred was heavy enough for the payment that now seemed to be required," he seals Weiss into a tiny hidden room he has built in the loft of his barn. During the ensuing two years, Weiss's physical and emotional survival become the responsibility of Niki and his first love, Sigi, a blind girl. Though a tale of Holocaust survival, this is also the story of many friendships: between a worldly doctor and the bewildered children who tend to him yet look to him for guidance; between a sensitive young man and a perceptive young woman yearning to discover themselves; and among the sometimes stoic, sometimes irrational villagers, who have known each other all their lives. Although he can be pretentiously philosophical at times, Moran is a sophisticated storyteller who subtly explores the way ordinary people, even children, are capable of both good and evil, betrayal and sacrifice. BOMC and QPB alternate selection. (Jan.)

Library Journal

In a small village in Austria during World War II, Dr. Robert Weiss, a Jewish doctor, shows up unexpectedly at the house of the Lukassers (a "righteous gentile" family) beseeching refuge from the Nazis. He is well known to the family, having saved the life of their only son, Niki, years before by performing an emergency appendectomy. Lukasser knows the dangers of harboring a Jew; nevertheless, he builds a false room in his barn, not bigger than a box, where Weiss hides for more than two years. A warm relationship develops among the doctor; Niki, who brings him food; and Sigi, a blind girl, and the children endlessly discuss the situation. Eventually, the secret begins to take its toll on the family. The result is a test of courage under stress and of what good people feel they must do. Sensitive and evocatively written, this is an impressive debut for journalist Moran. Recommended for large collections.-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.

Kirkus Reviews

First-novelist Moran, who edits W magazine, has chosen an unconventional debut subject: a childhood encounter with the shadow of Nazism and the consequences of ethnic prejudice, set in Austria during WW II.

In the village of Sankt Vero, shopkeeper Martin Lukasser is approached by a Jewish doctor, Robert Weiss, in flight from the Nazis and seeking refuge. Years earlier, Weiss had performed an emergency appendectomy on Lukasser's son Niki. In return, Martin now constructs a tiny concealed room, scarcely larger than a box, in his barn and hides the doctor in it for two years, until the war ends. Weiss's only "visitors" are the now adolescent Niki and the latter's best friend Sigi, a blind girl. The pair listen raptly as "our Jew" tries to pass the time by telling the story of his life (and, more reluctantly, of his loves). This is, therefore, a coming-of-age novel, short on plot and of interest mainly for the smoothness of Niki's present-tense narration and for Moran's characterizations. Dr. Weiss is, as the teenagers see him, opaque; Niki is believably sensitive and observant; and Sigi is especially vividly drawn—she isn't at all long-suffering or saintly, and there are streaks of irritability and cruelty in her that, oddly enough, endear her to us. Moran writes amusingly of adolescent sexual curiosity and confusion, presenting the Nazi menace as more inconvenience and annoyance than threat to the beleaguered villagers who must billet Wehrmacht soldiers in their homes and safeguard their daughter's virtue. Unfortunately, the story's impact is blunted by its reliance on several clichéd characters, the most glaring of which are a taciturn father whose stoic demeanor masks an embarrassing secret, and the beautiful, lonely schoolteacher whom obtuse townspeople mistake for a seductress.

The novel invites, absorbs, but does not fully convince the reader. A commendable first effort, then, but flawed by some flat secondary figures and a rather slow pace.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING