In all, a thoughtful and affecting addition to the literature of the Diaspora.
Three novella-length tales chronicle a devout family whose experiences parallel recent Jewish history.
In stories that are as much religious mediation (with generous quotations from the Torah, Talmud, and other holy writings) as they are accounts of a particular place—here Aleppo, Syria—the author vividly intertwines the ties of faith and family. Aleppo, long home to a thriving Jewish community, was ruled by the French between the two world wars, and the first two stories are set there during the French occupation. The third has an Israeli setting, as the family emigrates from what is now Arab-ruled Syria to Jerusalem. In “Truth Shall Spring from the Earth,” a young Yeshiva scholar learns that his great-great grandfather, once regarded as one of the foremost sages of Aleppo, was banned from teaching and that his baby daughter died soon after. Determined to learn what happened, and why the child died so suddenly, the young man consults old manuscripts and finally discovers the truth. In “The Wheel Turns Full Circle,” Raphael, a brilliant Aleppo student whose father had studied in France before WWII, also goes to Paris to study. His pious family expects him to become a rabbi, but, in Paris, he becomes involved in radical politics and disavows his religious heritage. This direction changes when a planned revolt against the French government fails and Raphael has time to think about his faith, his past, and Israel. The third story is a poignant tale, told by the grandson of an aging and distinguished rabbi who emigrates from Aleppo to Jerusalem but there lacks a congregation of his own. When a Hasidic rabbi dies suddenly on the eve of the Sabbath, the rabbi is asked to deliver the eulogy at the funeral. Preaching, he feels he is back in Aleppo with his old congregation, though the listeners find his accent strange and his sermon too long.
In all, a thoughtful and affecting addition to the literature of the Diaspora.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59264-051-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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