SERENADE, A memoir of music and love from Vienna and Prague to Los Angeles, 1927 to World War II to 2012 by Carol Jean Delmar, Willow Lane Press, Beverly Hills, California
By Eileen Wingard
SAN DIEGO — This is a beautifully written love story of Franziska Perger and Franz Jung against the backdrop of Europe as the Nazis ascended to power. It is the story of young love, Franziska was 15, Franz was 17 when they first met in Vienna.
Their love ripened into years of devoted loyalty and deep affection, facing the rejection of Franziska’s family, and the dangers of being Jews as the Germans invaded their native Austria, then Czechoslovakia, where Franz was forging an operatic career and Franziska had a job with a clothing designer. The pair managed to escape to Switzerland to withdraw money from a bank account before crossing the border into Italy, and finally, leaving Europe. First, they went to Venezuela, then Panama and Cuba before they were ultimately able to enter the United States. Their fears and struggles are well described.
During their travels, Franz found that he had lost his voice. Disheartened, he tried teaching, first, in New York, then in Knoxville, Tennessee.
At last, the immigrant couple ended up in Hollywood, where Franz took a minimum wage job at the Western Costume Company. This led to a career as an award-winning costumer and costume designer for many television shows, including the hit TV series, The Untouchables. To become more Americanized, they changed their names to Frances and Frank Delmar. They had a child, Carol Jean, and it is this daughter who authored the memoir
about her parents. She traveled to all the places where they had lived, took photos and carefully observed the surroundings so that she could describe every locale in great detail.
An interesting feature of the book is that Carol Jean Delmar summarized the plots of the many operas in which her father, Franz, sang and gave interesting insights into the roles he portrayed. Although the author writes the book as a historical novel, including dialogue and action that she could not have been privy to, and she has changed the names of some of the characters, at the end of many chapters, in italics, she comments about what
she has done, so we are able to discern what was fact and what was fictionalized.
In the Epilogue, she again speaks in her own voice, and we realize that she is an important third person in this beautiful love story, the little girl who was always felt loved and special, the only child who faced the loss of both of her loving parents. This book is her story, too. The saga of her parents’ lives is one of triumph over adversity, and gives us reason to feel uplifted. But, when we read the epilogue and feel her loneliness, we are left with a tragic ending.
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Wingard is a freelance writer and former violinist with the San Diego Symphony. She may be contacted at eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com
I am Carol Jean Delmar, the author of “Serenade.” I want to thank Ms. Wingard for the beautiful review and compliments about my writing. However, with regards to her fourth paragraph which states that I, the author, have written “Serenade” as a historical novel and changed the names of some of the characters, I would like to clarify that the title of the book is “Serenade: A MEMOIR of Music and Love from Vienna and Prague to Los Angeles.” I write clearly in the introduction that “Serenade” is a memoir. And in the Chapter Notes, I explain that the book uses creative nonfiction narrative to give life to truth. Creative nonfiction is a popular genre now. A historical novel would not display 100 true illustrations and documents. The author of a fictional novel usually creates the storyline or plot. All of the events and happenings in “Serenade” are true and based on the audiotapes that my dear father left me, my travels and research. Even the dialogue is based on those tapes and my discussions with my father. None of the names have been changed. I only created names for people if my father could not remember them, to keep the flow of the writing in tact. My italicized comments are explanations and rarely delineate fact from fiction. If I had written the book as a historical novel, no explanations would have been warranted. The book is creative nonfiction and a true memoir with chapter notes, a bibliography and an index of true names. If labeled a novel, “Serenade” would be labeled a nonfiction novel; however, the word “memoir” describes it best. Yet, there does seem to be a fine line between the creative nonfiction and historical fiction genres. I stand firm on my categorization. But in deference to Ms. Wingard’s evaluation, I found an enlightening article on the subject (URL below) which shows the current frustration among authors when categorizing their books. However, with all due respect to my parents and my years of research, in my mind, “Serenade” fits best into the categories of creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction and memoir. The debate: http://www.curatormagazine.com/joshcacopardo/creative-historical-memoir-fiction Another website writes about genres at http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2011/04/allure-of-narrative-non-fiction.html . There are many articles on the subject on google.