Fried’s second novel (My Father’s Fighter, 2004) is a smart account of a New Yorker’s mid-life musings.
September 11th has passed and Bush is about to invade Iraq, but what’s really troubling Joseph Steiner is that, at 49, he has managed to lose his job as a TV executive. He knew the lay-offs were coming, but forewarning hardly compensates for the emasculation of middle-age joblessness. On a whim, he and his wife Mary, a left-wing publisher, accept an offer to join friends for Christmas in Paris, giving Joseph an opportunity to lick his wounds. Judith and Tad, American journalists stationed in Paris, have been sent to the frontlines to cover the war, and Joseph and Mary get to stay at their posh Saint Germain apartment and shop the Boulevard. The suspicion that his friends are leading better, more meaningful lives is reinforced when he meets up with other old buddies: Johnny, an American ex-pat involved in edgy Parisian theater and the recent recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, and Gilles, a handsome doctor married to a bestselling Irish author. As dinner discussions revolve around trite topics like Karl Lagerfeld’s newly slim figure, unhappy Joseph contemplates his own slightly pallid life, remembering his days as a reticent and self-conscious student in Paris. As their holiday comes to an end, Joseph and Mary have Christmas dinner at Gilles’s country chateau, where Joseph is confronted by an angry economist, whose harsh words—that Joseph is an emotional infant, a trait common among Americans—rings painfully true.
The story covers small territory, but it explores it in an insightful, amiable way.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-57962-114-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
Categories: RELIGIOUS FICTION
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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
Categories: RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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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
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
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