SOURCE: Gordon, Neil. “No Direction Home.” Washington Post Book World (14 January 2001): 3-4.

In the following review, Gordon praises What Remains for its thoughtful, evocative, and lucid prose, as well as vivid characterization. Gordon discusses the theme of Jewish identity in the wake of the Holocaust as treated in Delbanco's novel.

The Holocaust is not only the brutal history of an attempted genocide nor the nightmarish story of the camps. It's also a symphony of dignity lost, of warmth and childhood forever poisoned by the knowledge that generations of Jews anchored in Europe were uprooted in a few sudden years by implacable bureaucrats and jackbooted sadists. Nowhere was this more shocking than in Germany itself, where hundreds of years of Jewish residence had created a community as inextricably interwoven into German life as Jews are today into America, Judaism being often the weaker of their cultural and political identifications...