Yes, Potok (In The Beginning, The Chosen) is once again following a young Jewish protagonist on a journey that ends, somewhat too perfunctorily, with a reaffirmation of Faith. But this time the doubts along the way are so textured, so centrally disturbing, that this flawed, richly challenging novel (perhaps too challenging for some of Potok's usual audience) offers considerably more to the non-believer than Potok's previous fiction. The quiet, questing hero here is Gershon Loran, "a scared twentieth-century Jew with visions." His parents were killed in a riot while on a 1930s landbuying trip to Israel; he's grown up in Brooklyn with his uncle and aunt, fragile beings shattered by their son's WW II death. So by now, circa 1950, Gershon has turned inward, away from the horror—to the study of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism); at a N.Y. seminary he becomes the protege of a great Kabbalist, spurning an equally great sage of Talmud (a more worldly, law-oriented field of study). But Gershon's roommate at the seminary turns out to be a boozy embodiment of the horrors from which Gershon is fleeing: he is Arthur Leiden, the handsome, joking, guilt-wracked son of a key A-bomb physicist. And after Gershon has spent a year as a chaplain in postwar Korea (functioning well in the real world but riveted by memories and visions), Arthur turns up there too, obsessively determined to visit Japan. Hiroshima, of course, is the destination—and Arthur says Kaddish at the monument there. But for Gersbon there is also the unsettling impact of the vast alien Orient, seemingiy outside the "world" of the Old Testament: "He was being taught the loveliness of God's world by a pagan land." So finally, after Arthur's plane-crash death—headed for yet one more Japan pilgrimage—Gershon's visions and voices debate the right response of a new generation to "the shards left by the giants." This finale, with Gershon repeating the Kaddish and returning to the Kabbalah, seems oddly evasive. And, throughout, Potok slips into platitudes, with some ponderous stretches. But the novel is tremendously shapely, stately in pace yet dramatic and vivid in its canny storytelling. And, though occasionally overdone, the, haunting interplay of "light" imagery (from Kabbalah legend to Hiroshima's "death-light" to the fluorescents in a delicatessen) reflects a fundamental spiritual questioning that goes beyond secular concern. A dark tapestry of a book, then, more suggestive than powerful, with threads that may reach out and hold a surprising range of readers.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1981
ISBN: 0449001148
Page Count: 389
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1981
An experienced novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled.
Well-oiled Picoult sets her latest expertly devised search-and-rescue tale in rural New Hampshire, where a kidnapping case is uncovered 28 years too late.
As usual, Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper, 2004, etc.) spins a terrifically suspenseful tale by developing just the right human-interest elements to make a workable story. Single mom Delia Hopkins works with the local Wexton police and a bloodhound named Greta to find lost children. Delia’s close relationship with her divorced, 60-ish father, Andrew, who runs a senior-citizens’ home, grows strained when he’s suddenly arrested on kidnapping charges. The victim is Delia herself, named Bethany Matthews before her father fled with her from a drunken Mexican mother in Arizona. For 28 of her 32 years, Delia has believed her mother was dead. With Andrew extradited to Phoenix, the strange history of the case unravels, complicated by the choice of Delia’s fiancé, Eric (father of daughter Sophie), as Andrew’s lawyer and the assignment of her childhood buddy Fitz to cover the case for his newspaper. Picoult is a thorough, perceptive writer who deliberately presents alternating viewpoints, so that the truth seems constantly to be shifting. When Delia finally meets the attractive, remarried Elise Vasquez, she can’t quite vilify a woman who has been sober for many years and works as a curandera (healer). Her father’s story is both suspect and understandable, especially in light of his horrific treatment in prison, caught up in the violence of rival gangs. The magnetic Eric is a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon when stressed, while dependable, silent lover Fitz waits in the wings for his chance. Meanwhile, Delia and Sophie make a fascinating digression into the mythical world of the local Hopi tribe. At times, Picoult goes over the top, allowing Sophie to get lost so that Greta can find her and, at the eleventh hour, inserting into the trial the possibility of Delia’s sexual abuse .
An experienced novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled.Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7434-5454-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Thinness aside: riveting stuff, with language so frank it curls your hair.
Debut novel by hip-hop rap artist Sister Souljah, whose No Disrespect(1994), which mixes sexual history with political diatribe, is popular in schools countrywide.
In its way, this is a tour de force of black English and underworld slang, as finely tuned to its heroine’s voice as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. The subject matter, though, has a certain flashiness, like a black Godfather family saga, and the heroine’s eventual fall develops only glancingly from her character. Born to a 14-year-old mother during one of New York’s worst snowstorms, Winter Santiaga is the teenaged daughter of Ricky Santiaga, Brooklyn’s top drug dealer, who lives like an Arab prince and treats his wife and four daughters like a queen and her princesses. Winter lost her virginity at 12 and now focuses unwaveringly on varieties of adolescent self-indulgence: sex and sugar-daddies, clothes, and getting her own way. She uses school only as a stepping-stone for getting out of the house—after all, nobody’s paying her to go there. But if there’s no money in it, why go? Meanwhile, Daddy decides it’s time to move out of Brooklyn to truly fancy digs on Long Island, though this places him in the discomfiting position of not being absolutely hands-on with his dealers; and sure enough the rise of some young Turks leads to his arrest. Then he does something really stupid: He murders his wife’s two weak brothers in jail with him on Riker’s Island and gets two consecutive life sentences. Winter’s then on her own, especially with Bullet, who may have replaced her dad as top hood, though when she selfishly fails to help her pregnant buddy Simone, there’s worse—much worse—to come.
Thinness aside: riveting stuff, with language so frank it curls your hair.Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02578-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
