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A review by lazygal
Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick
3.0
The author does a great job of writing in a very old-fashioned style, one more suited the books my parents and grandparents read rather than modern literature. That's not a bad thing, just a caution for those looking for a zippy read: this will take time to digest.
Looking back over his long association with the Temple Academy for Boys, as a student and then as a trustee, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie takes his time getting to the meat of his story. There are meanderings around the life of the school, his family's connections to Sir Flinders Petrie, how the trustees work, his Remington and myriad other topics, while we want to get to his friendship with Ben-Zion Elephantine. When Ben-Zion appears, it's still very much overshadowed by the rest of Lloyd's memoir, and how that friendship was ruptured doesn't appear to play as big a role in the written story as we're led to believe.
Another quibble is that phrase "the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school's ethos" in the blurb. It's not subtle!
eARC provided by publisher via Netgalley.
Looking back over his long association with the Temple Academy for Boys, as a student and then as a trustee, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie takes his time getting to the meat of his story. There are meanderings around the life of the school, his family's connections to Sir Flinders Petrie, how the trustees work, his Remington and myriad other topics, while we want to get to his friendship with Ben-Zion Elephantine. When Ben-Zion appears, it's still very much overshadowed by the rest of Lloyd's memoir, and how that friendship was ruptured doesn't appear to play as big a role in the written story as we're led to believe.
Another quibble is that phrase "the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school's ethos" in the blurb. It's not subtle!
eARC provided by publisher via Netgalley.