Unlike the protagonists in so much recent fiction, Emanuel is never a victim but an acute observer of human nature,...
Blecher’s second and final novel, written when he was 27, two years before his death in 1936, tells the obviously autobiographical story of a young Romanian man’s experience after he is diagnosed with Pott’s disease, a tuberculosis of the spine.
Emanuel, who has been studying chemistry in Paris, is “terrified” and “bewildered” when he gets his medical diagnosis. His doctors, portrayed as decent, kind men, send him to a sanatorium at Berck-sur-Mer. With a dreamlike sense of detail, Blecher describes Emanuel’s adjustment to his new life. Placed inside a body cast, Emanuel feels he has joined a new world of “not being ‘fully alive.’ ” He debates whether to become resigned to his situation, what his doctor describes as cicatrisation, the growing insensitivity as emotional scar tissue forms. Although Emanuel experiences melancholy he finds he almost enjoys his new idleness. He also finds plenty of friendship, romance and drama within the closed society of the sanatorium where emotions are as often heightened as they are dulled by physical limitations. He witnesses the complexity of the patients’ reactions to their illness. Some die, some recover, some who recover physically remain permanently scarred emotionally. Soon Emanuel is passionately involved with Solange, a former patient still living in the town—once cured, many find it difficult to return to their old lives. Emanuel drives a horse-drawn stretcher trolley into the countryside (a photo on the book’s back cover shows a handsome, young Blecher in such a carriage beside an unnamed woman) where he and Solange dine at inns and have sexual interludes near the sea. But Solange’s devotion, which he has fostered, becomes an irritation. He escapes her and the sanatorium by moving into a villa on the beach. When he finally has his cast removed, he has life-affirming casual sex with an Irish woman, then travels to Switzerland.
Unlike the protagonists in so much recent fiction, Emanuel is never a victim but an acute observer of human nature, including his own.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-905-847-18-1
Page Count: 228
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.
A Christian woman and a Jewish man fall in love in medieval France.
In 1088, a Christian girl of Norman descent falls in love with the son of a rabbi. They run away together, to disastrous effect: Her father sends knights after them, and though they flee to a small southern village where they spend a few happy years, their budding family is soon decimated by a violent wave of First Crusaders on their way to Jerusalem. The girl, whose name becomes Hamoutal when she converts to Judaism, winds up roaming the world. Hertmans’ (War and Turpentine, 2016, etc.) latest novel is based on a true story: The Cairo Genizah, a trove of medieval manuscripts preserved in an Egyptian synagogue, contained an account of Hamoutal’s plight. Hamoutal makes up about half of Hertmans’ novel; the other half is consumed by Hertmans’ own interest in her story. Whenever he can, he follows her journey: from Rouen, where she grew up, to Monieux, where she and David Todros—her Jewish husband—made a brief life for themselves, and all the way to Cairo, and back. “Knowing her life story and its tragic end,” Hertmans writes, “I wish I could warn her of what lies ahead.” The book has a quiet intimacy to it, and in his descriptions of landscape and travel, Hertmans’ prose is frequently lovely. In Narbonne, where David’s family lived, Hertmans describes “the cool of the paving stones in the late morning, the sound of doves’ wings flapping in the immaculate air.” But despite the drama of Hamoutal’s story, there is a static quality to the book, particularly in the sections where Hertmans describes his own travels. It’s an odd contradiction: Hertmans himself moves quickly through the world, but his book doesn’t quite move quickly enough.
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4708-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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