Fugitive Pieces

In this impressionistic, rose-and honey-toned memory piece, young Jacob hides from the Nazis in 1941 Poland but his parents are killed and his sister is captured. The terrified boy is discovered by a Greek archaeologist, who takes him in and becomes a gentle, devoted surrogate father. Over the years, Jacob (played as an adult by Stephen Dillane) tries to make sense of his past and his present.

He becomes a writer and marries the warm-hearted Alex (Rosamund Pike). But he continues to carry the ghosts of his past and she realizes that limits his ability to be close to her. “To live with ghosts requires solitude,” she tells him.

Jacob will have to endure additional losses to put his past in context and to find a way to make a deeper, more trusting connection. While it does not have the lyricism of the book’s limpid prose, it is a moving story, gently and sincerely told.