Despite the recent embrace of Kabbalah as the contemporary celebrity spiritual plaything, it’s unlikely that the Hollywood pack will spend many hours studying the intricacies of this willfully arcane first novel by an American writer who lives and teaches in Portugal. First published there (to wide acclaim) in Zimler’s own Portuguese translation, it’s a murder mystery set in Lisbon in the early 16th century: a time of wholesale persecution and executions of Jews (who refused to convert into “New Christians”), and also the establishment of a religious “underground” devoted to the preservation of endangered orthodox rituals. Berekiah Zarco, a young manuscript illuminator and fruitseller (whose manuscript is discovered centuries later, by this novel’s supposed editor), tells the story of his search for the killer of his beloved Uncle Abraham, a “kabbalah master” whose naked body was discovered beside that of an (initially) unknown young woman. Evidence that the two had had sex just before their deaths proves open to multiple interpretation—as do other adventures that befall Berekiah as he seeks to apply the interpretive skills taught by the Jewish mystics to the bewildering pattern of collusions and conflicts that his “investigations” disclose. Zimler’s plot wheezes and strains more than a little (there are far too many essentially similar coincidences and hairsbreadth escapes), but Berekiah’s hard-won wisdom is credibly linked to his memories of his Uncle’s exemplary stories, and effectively concealed in enigmatic proverbial nuggets (e.g., “The map of a town is in a blind beggar’s feet”). The novel exhibits a curious predilection for revoltingly detailed descriptions of torture and murder, but there’s no gainsaying its authoritative re-creation of an imperilled culture in a savage time and place, or the force of the prophecy that Berekiah finally infers from the mystery of the death his Uncle doubtless expected—and may have courted. A bit attenuated, but, on balance, one of the more unusual and interesting first novels of recent vintage.
Pub Date: April 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-87951-834-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
In between the more hysterical moments, Brooks writes quite beautifully. But Year of Wonders was a mistake.
Painstaking re-creation of 17th-century England, swallowed by over-the-top melodramatics: a wildly uneven first novel by an Australian-born journalist.
The Year of the title is 1665: the date of the devastating bubonic epidemic chronicled in Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. Brooks’s tale, framed by reveries set a year and a half after the plague burns itself out (in “Leaf-Fall, 1666”), is narrated by Anna Frith, an earnest and highly intelligent young widow who buries her own multiple bereavements (first her gentle husband, later their two small sons) in work, aiding her (unnamed) village rector’s wife in treating the sick with medicinal herbs and traditional cures. Brooks is at her best in lyrical, precise descriptions of country landscapes and village customs, and makes something very appealing and (initially) quite credible out of Anna’s wary hunger for learning and innate charitable kindness. But the novel goes awry when the panic of contagion isolates her village from neighboring hamlets, a forthright young woman and her distracted aunt are accused of witchcraft and hunted down, and Anna’s drunken, violent father, who profits as a gravedigger for hire, resorts to providing corpses that will require his services. The excesses continue, as Anna’s stepmother, crazed with grief, seeks vengeance against rector Michael Mompellion and his saintly wife (and Anna’s mentor and soulmate) Elinor, and rise to a feverish pitch when Anna, having found a new innocent victim to nurture and raise, offends the powerful Bradford family and must flee to safety—ending up (in a borderline-risible Epilogue) in North Africa in the sanctuary of a kindly “Bey’s” harem. It’s all more than a bit much: Thomas Hardy crossed with Erskine Caldwell, with more than a whiff of Jane Eyre in Anna’s conflicted devotion to the brooding, Mr. Rochester–like Mompellion.
In between the more hysterical moments, Brooks writes quite beautifully. But Year of Wonders was a mistake.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-91021-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
Chock-full of rich detail and literary intrigue.
A mysterious collection of papers hidden in a historic London home sends two scholars of Jewish history on an unforgettable quest.
When Helen Watt receives a phone call from a former student about centuries-old documents secreted away in his posh residence, she doesn’t hold out much hope for their importance. Close to retirement, Helen’s seen it all. But a cursory look at the papers tells her she’s holding something special. She returns to the house with Aaron Levy, an eager American graduate student, in tow. Despite butting heads over process, the unlikely pair of literary detectives uncover a stunning truth: the writer of the documents is a 17th-century woman who chronicled the Jewish diaspora, from the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition to the rich trade city of Amsterdam and the relative safe haven of London. Kadish (I Was Here, 2014, etc.) deftly weaves contemporary scholarly intrigue with the voice of Ester Velasquez, an incandescent 17th-century mind who longed to engage with the brilliant men of her day. “Here I begin,” writes Ester in her very first attempt. “I am one soul in a great city.” Ester risks everything to wrestle with ideas that counter rabbinical teachings, developing a secret identity to protect her family from harm—and relishing her newfound freedom. Clocking in at almost 600 pages, the novel could have used a judicious pruning to highlight the intellectual game of cat and mouse that plays out across four centuries. Still, Kadish’s characters are memorable, and we’re treated to a host of them: pious rabbis and ribald actors, socialites and troubled young men, Mossad agents and rule-worshipping archivists. From Shakespeare’s Dark Lady to Spinoza’s philosophical heresies, Kadish leaves no stone unturned in this moving historical epic.
Chock-full of rich detail and literary intrigue.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-86646-1
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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