Toronto Star Review

This beguiling biography, This Great Escape — shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction — follows Ottawa writer Andrew Steinmetz deep into the “Hansel and Gretel woods,” searching for answers about a German cousin, Michael Paryla, whom he never met. Steinmetz has trodden these woods before, winning the 2009 Ottawa Book Award for Eva’s Threepenny Theatre, his novelistic memoir about Michael’s mother — who was also Steinmetz’s great aunt.

Growing up, Steinmetz knew only that his cousin acted in the 1963 hit movie, The Great Escape, and that he died of an overdose. Michael is a mystery demanding to be solved, obsession be damned.

FULL REVIEW by Nancy Wigston here.

The Canadian Jewish News

Here is an interview about the family as distinct society, Keat's idea of negative capability, and the author's 'crossed out Jewish origins'. Thanks to Nancy Wigston and The Canadian Jewish News.

CJN.: Was the real Eva a wild character?

Steinmetz: She was no WASP, let’s put it that way. Direct, irreverent, packed with real and put-on emotions, her humour came from the extravagant positions she would take. Her theatre training and love of exaggeration made sure she was the focus of attention. I got to know her first when I was 12 and she was in her 60s. She moved into our [Eastern Townships] summer house with at least five dogs. My Swedish grandparents were already living there. They had a whippet – we had two dogs and a cat. On weekends, it was mayhem. I loved that atmosphere.

Eva never stopped telling stories. I picked up on her European sensibility – apparent in her tastes and habits: goose fat, Russian rye, garlic, wine, cigarettes. I didn’t grow up feeling very Canadian. Canadians ate hot dogs, we didn’t. Whatever Eva was,wherever she came from, I liked that place. I felt comfortable dreaming about it.

Full interview here.