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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
3.5* First of all, absolutely love the title. This book was very slow developing. Toggling between the years and the several story lines was taxing. Interesting historical content.
Family drama plus history, philosophy and a mystery thrown in. Add a few cases of unrequited love, plague, death and a silly young woman.
Took a while to get into it (but that was more Covid-brain). Loved it so much. I’m a historic fiction fan and I particularly like the successful merging of “today” and history. This was done masterfully. Almost loved the story of the nearing retirement professor as I did the 15th century young woman breaking tradition to be true to herself.
I think it was an interesting story and a great way to learn about history- but the author was trying to do too much. Simpler would have been better.
There are three main characters in this book — two from current day and one from the 17th century. All are very sympathetic characters and their stories both intertwined and well developed by the author, Rachel Kadish. I loved learning about the 17th century Jewish community in London and Kadish’s use of current-day scholarship to provide perspective on both what was happening then and to the characters now. A really interesting read!
When your favorite English teacher gives a book 5 stars and raves about the character development you pick it up. This story did not disappoint!! I was so drawn to the story lines that I had a hard time putting the book down. These characters will definitely stay with me for a long time. Without giving too much away, I felt as sad at the end of this story as I did at the end of Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler.
If anyone had told me what this book "was about," I don't think I would have been even remotely interested. Going in blind, I was quickly engaged by the intertwining narratives of the 21st century protagonists with the 17th century subject of their research and a protagonist in her own right.
Backstories of the principal characters and even supporting cast are skillfully interwoven into the two primary story lines. The character arcs seem to flow naturally out of those backstories and the plot points as they take place.
Kadish's prose is skillfully rendered in the service of story, never being self conscious or getting in the way.
With little didacticism, Kadish enriches the novel with critical observations of contemporary and 17th century sexism; contemporary and 17th century anti-semitism; contemporary and 17th century academic/religious politics; developing 17th century theology, philosophy, and thought; the Spanish Inquisition; the plague; and contemporary Zionism. We also get some rich detail of managing 17th century households.
Suspense is built as the plot thickens. The reader anxiously pursues the solution to the various mysteries while dreading the book's coming to an end. At least, I did.
I very much appreciated that the meaning of life is revealed in this novel as it is in Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge.
I have one little quibble with an unnecessary introduction of possible connection to celebrity, but I suspect others won't have the same issue.
Highly recommended.
Backstories of the principal characters and even supporting cast are skillfully interwoven into the two primary story lines. The character arcs seem to flow naturally out of those backstories and the plot points as they take place.
Kadish's prose is skillfully rendered in the service of story, never being self conscious or getting in the way.
With little didacticism, Kadish enriches the novel with critical observations of contemporary and 17th century sexism; contemporary and 17th century anti-semitism; contemporary and 17th century academic/religious politics; developing 17th century theology, philosophy, and thought; the Spanish Inquisition; the plague; and contemporary Zionism. We also get some rich detail of managing 17th century households.
Suspense is built as the plot thickens. The reader anxiously pursues the solution to the various mysteries while dreading the book's coming to an end. At least, I did.
I very much appreciated that the meaning of life is revealed in this novel as it is in Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge.
I have one little quibble with an unnecessary introduction of possible connection to celebrity, but I suspect others won't have the same issue.
Highly recommended.
I found that I disliked each of the characters at some point (or longer) throughout reading this book. I disagreed with them. I didn't understand their motives or their logic or their actions. But who in real life have I ever 100% understood or liked or agreed/sympathized with? And despite that, the story intrigued me from the start. The prose in this novel is beautiful - never before have I highlighted so many lines for later reflection and enjoyment. On that note, never before have I had to highlight every date mentioned in a book either - an act which made it possible for me to somewhat-quickly keep a straightish timeline in my head in a book that is full of twists and turns and jumps in its gentle unraveling. Am I 100% happy with the ending.....? No. But is it fitting and perhaps more plausible and realistic than what I would have wished? Yes. And is that more in line with the truth and heart of the story? Also yes. All-in-all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I have already highly recommended it to friends and family alike. For all those with a love of reading, writing, learning, and/or history, this book is a deep, clear pool to slake your thirst. I hope you find it as mesmerizingly beautiful as I did.
Historical fiction as it should be. Esther is a young jewish woman who has escaped from the Inquisition with her family to refuge in 17th century Amsterdam and then London. She has some education and yearns to pursue knowledge but that avenue is closed to women in the 1600s. When she and her brother are orphaned by an accidental fire in Amsterdam a blind rabbi takes them into his improvised household and moves them to London. There Esther becomes becomes the rabbi's scribe when no qualified man is available. Because the rabbi can't see she both reads to him and writes for him. Soon she takes to writing for herself under various assumed names. She lives at the time of the 21st century scholars struggle to discover who she was. This is a great book. Read it!