THE BOOKS OF RACHEL

by Joel Gross ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 30, 1979

Yet another commercial exploitation of atrocities visited upon the spirit and bodies of Jews--here featuring several women named Rachel from 500 years of a diamond-merchant family. The history of the family's business begins in 15th-century Spain, and there's an heirloom jewel, ""a flawless, table-cut, sixty-carat white diamond"" that is passed down from Rachel to Rachel; the book is in fact a massive flashback that is cornily triggered when the modern New York Rachel receives the stone on her wedding day and faints as ""knowledge rushed through her like the wind of the spirit."" Among the wearers of the diamond: a sweet, gentle girl horribly tortured in Spain's Inquisition in 1484, who heroically kills her torturer before her death; a young woman of Venice's 1610 ghetto who is rescued with her prostitute sister by the giant Ha-Cohen after a sword duel and taken to Amsterdam; a proud, aggressive, very secular Rachel of 1772 Berlin, humbled and enriched by a sacrificial love for that doomed seeker, Mordecai of Mir, a brilliant holy man who turns his back on religion but not life; wealthy, idealistic French Rachel who travels to 1852 Jerusalem to help her people and nearly dies but is saved by the diamond, symbol of her parents' love; and a 1937 English Rachel who learns the horror of anti-Semitism and the need to fight from beloved Wilfred Cohen (who will assassinate a Nazi and pay with his life) and dies in the Holocaust. Linked with brief genealogies and solid information about the diamond business, this rather florid saga has little sense of period speech or mores and even less feeling for the everyday humanity in which real tragedy is grounded. For all the diamonds in the plot, it's zircon through and through--but, like many artificial gems aimed at a mass market, this shinily phony paste job will no doubt sell well in costume-jeweled circles.

Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1979

ISBN: 0595128203

Page Count: -

Publisher: Seaview--dist. by Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION