THE ILLUMINATED SOUL

A studious young Jewish boy sees a wider and more exciting world after a beautiful and mysterious woman enters his family’s house in Windsor, Ontario.

Narrated by the boy, Joseph, from his vantage decades later as a well-traveled and respected neuroanatomist, the story tells of that beautiful stranger, Eva Laquedem. Soon after WWII, the queenly Eva comes to rent a room; and, almost before she has introduced herself, the family—Joseph, his mother, his little brother Asa—has solidly fallen in love with her. Before her arrival, Eva had hopscotched around the globe after fleeing her home of Prague on the eve of WWII. She kept with her the entire time a precious 15th-century illuminated Hebrew text called the Augsbury Miscellany, highly sought after by collectors and scholars. A great deal of this utterly graceful second novel by Stollman (The Far Euphrates, 1997) deals with the ruminative contents of the manuscript and its philosophical implications. In Joseph’s telling, it seems that Eva hardly stops speaking from the second she sets foot in his house, though that hardly seems to bother her enthralled audience. It doesn’t hurt that her tales are full of drama, history, and passion, not to mention laced with erudite quotations and learned references. In fewer words, we learn about Joseph’s mother, quietly struggling to make a career for herself as a caterer, and Asa, a delicate child slowly going blind. Eva’s sound and fury can grow oppressive, and it may be hard to imagine anyone—even a lonely family like this—so desperate for civilized conversation and a whiff of foreign intrigue as to put up with her so patiently. But Stollman is a writer of rare skill, every line molded and sculpted to perfection, and life in a small Canadian Jewish community is well rendered.

The sense of loss pervading these Holocaust-stricken pages is almost overwhelming—even if The Illuminated Soul does spend too much time on its least interesting character.