Grabbed me right away, and made me feel like I was there, watching the movers. Then later. in the barn, in the woods. Gripping and thoughtful, with lots of detail and thought. ( )

What a great premise! A elderly man and woman welcome movers to take a lifetime of treasures cross-country from New York to California. The movers show up a day before they thought they were expected, but chalk it up to their old age. Man and wife spend the night in their newly empty house, only to have the doorbell ring the next morning. It's the REAL movers.

The story was fast-moving and easy to read. The protagonist, Peke, has a past that has prepared him to retrieve his possessions, which is exactly what he intends to do. Despite his age, he is sharp in his mind and fast on his feet.

Surrounded by a cast of interesting characters, and equally bad villians, the only reason to give this a middle-of-the-road three looks is the writing. I found the writing to be loose and redundant. Stone seemed to make the same point over and over, and it weighed down the flow of the storytelling. It was a nice read, and had a satisfying ending, though. I will read another by this author, and do recommend it simply for the intriguing premise. ( )

This book really surprised me. With just the first few pages I was wondering how the author was going to fill all of the rest of the pages in the book---what could possibly happen? Nice surprise----it moved right along! Discovering who Peke is, for the reader as well as for Peke himself, is quite a story. ( )

Moving Day is an exciting action novel on one level and an interesting philosophical discussion on another. The main theme is the contrast of light and dark, good and evil, maturation and regression. The story concerns the retirement of a 72 year old Jewish survivor of the Holocaust in Poland and his decision with his wife to sell their lovely home in New England and move to a simpler life on the West Coast. Peke, Stanislaw Shmuel Pecoskowitz, is a fortunate survivor of Nazi atrocities who has repressed his memories of survival as a 7 year old hiding from the evil of a nation gone mad. Peke was able to travel to the United States after World War II and through hard work and willingness to assume financial risk, rise to upper class status and economic success. Valuable possessions were tangible symbols of his survival, achievement, and success.

When his possessions are taken from him, Peke is forced to change his plans from movement to action in a 21st Century social context. Life appeared to be stable in America given his achievements, but his loss brings up strong repressed emotions related to his childhood survival in a context of the Holocaust. Although the elderly man never developed an association with Jewish religious beliefs, his identity as a member of a race of people targeted for annihilation persisted for his entire life. Now, as Peke seeks his stolen possessions, he is confronted by strong feelings of rage and fear that he thought were resolved by the hard work and accomplishments of his adult life. In terms of Erik Erikson, the 72 year old man is confronted with the task of reviewing his life in terms of a dichotomy: Ego Integrity (light, good, maturation) vs Despair (darkness, evil, regression).

Peke is physically fit and, although forgetful in minor ways, fully functioning as an intelligent and thoughtful person. He takes action, in contrast to movement, and reworks his memories from a standpoint of elderly wisdom to attempt to gain a greater understanding of his lifetime motivations, decisions, and identity. Ultimately, as a Jewish man, Peke must choose to act on the basis of a unifying philosophy of Ego Integrity or the personal chaos of Despair.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and identified with Peke in his experiences of vulnerability in our current society and the necessity of calling on survival strengths and resolving dilemmas of weaknesses carried over from past personal decisions. I give this novel my highest recommendation to all but particularly to elderly readers. ( )

There are thrillers that focus primarily on plot, narratives that, by in large, burn fast and hot and fizzle out quickly. And these can often be very enjoyable, the literary equivalent of eating a Big Mac when you’re hungry: it’s fast, tastes great . . .but it leaves you hungry again half an hour later.

And then there are slow-burning, perspective-shifting thrillers like Moving Day by Jonathan Stone. This novel is equal parts crime thriller and (unintended) master class in fiction writing. But more on that later. First: the plot.

Peke is a wealthy seventy-two year old retiree who is moving from New York to the beaches of Santa Barbara, California, and on the day before the scheduled move, a seemingly legitimate moving company shows up and transports his belongings to the new home. But then the following day, the actual movers show up, and Peke and his wife realize they’ve been robbed. Peke, a Holocaust survivor, manages to track his down his belongings and recovers them. Nick, the sadistic thief behind the caper, then raises the stakes by kidnapping Peke in exchange for the stolen goods. What I dig about this plot is the utter low-tech-ness of the crime itself. Nick is that unicorn rare criminal who has intelligence, patience, and discipline, which makes him the perfect adversary to Peke, who also possesses those qualities.

For my money, the character development and the never-ending supply of brilliantly written passages are what make this book so satisfying. Stone manages to capture the internal worlds of a career criminal and a Holocaust survivor, and this frequent shifting of perspective adds layer upon layer of meaning to the narrative. Below I’ve quoted a few fantastic passages from the book, so you get an idea of what I’m writing about.

From a passage where Peke discovers outside the thief’s hideout a large pile of trash: “He feels that simple realization like a weight on him. Amid the exhilaration and excitement of retrieving his belongings, a sudden weight of brooding. . .This is where it will end up for the thief, too. Their odd communion. Meaninglessness piled high.”

From a passage where Peke remembers being in Poland evading the Nazis: “He watches the bug. . .He looks at it. Watches it scoot frantically around on his broad, ancient, creviced palm, looking for a path, an exit. . .Then, impulsively, he slaps the black bug into his mouth, bites down a few times, hears and feels the unmistakable crunch in his jaw, then swallows.”

Paragraphs like these are everywhere in this book, and Moving Day is worth reading for the pure joy of language alone.

Bottom line, this thriller inches along at a snail’s pace, builds the tension very, very slowly, yet very, very effectively. You live and breathe in Peke’s world, in Nick’s world, and that level of realism makes for a highly readable book. Put another way: Moving Day is no Big Mac, and Jonathan Stone is no short order cook. Moving Day is a complex entree with a multitude of tastes and textures, and Jonathan Stone is a master chef. ( )