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peggyd 's review for:
The Weight of Ink
by Rachel Kadish
I'm not gonna lie: this book was often a struggle and it took me longer than usual to wade through it, but the pay-offs along the way were worth it: a layered story putting the 21st century and the 17th century in conversation, some iron-strong female characters, and observations that I think I'll be turning around in my head for a long, long time.
This book takes two timelines, first, Helen Watt, a history professor grappling with infirmity and impending (forced) retirement and her new graduate assistant, Aaron Levy--basically a parody of the cocksure, smarmy grad student--assigned to help her with a discovery of a cache of 17th century letters that are important for Jewish scholarship and will, eventually, offer extraordinary insights into the period. Aaron is "assigned" to Helen because he's at a standstill in both his life and dissertation. They abhor each other immediately and part of the story is the way their relationship ebbs and flows, leading from loathing to reluctant acceptance to respect and even devotion.
The second timeline is the cache of discovered papers, which leads to the shocking discovery of a female scribe for a once-prominent Rabbi blinded during the Inquisition. Ester Velasquez is an unnatural thing--a learned woman thirsting for more knowledge--and we follow with Helen and Aaron her journey through scribing for the ailing Rabbi, through falling in love even though she has no wish to marry, through the London plague. There are basic questions of survival but then also what does survival mean if you are not allowed to be who you are? Ester is a remarkable female character, complex and often hard to like yet fierce, always searching for a way to learn more, to resist becoming the wife and mother society wants her to be. The book, with the overlapping storylines also becomes a kind of mystery--we know some of Ester's lifepoints before she gets to them in her telling, and there is a competing group of scholars working with the cache...who will triumph in publishing first? That Kadish can achieve the amount of tension she does with a story about historical papers and academic intrigue is, in a word, astonishing.
So ultimately this is a book that asks what it means to live a life: to love, to learn, to suffer. How can one find out who they are and then live a life true to that discovery? For Ester, it is how to find a way to live the life of a learned woman with one of the brightest minds of her time, forever hidden and struggling towards the light; for Aaron, it is figuring out who he even is beyond the veneer of charm and then finding the courage to embrace whatever he finds; for Helen, it is facing each day carrying enormous regrets that color every choice she makes--how to reconcile her past with the dwindling days she has left? These are lonely people with bright inner-lives trying to connect, trying to learn, trying to mesh their desires with the world in which they live. For the women especially, the world just doesn't want them to achieve their desires.
It's significant that these characters, no matter which era, struggle with the same things. The past always informs the present but can also be full of traps and pitfalls; it can trap you if you're not careful. If you like philosophy, Spinoza is a focal point, Hobbes makes an appearance, and Shakespeare hovers over every page. The allusions resonate.
This book, especially the last two parts, is a remarkable achievement. So erudite and thoughtful and rich. I had to read it with a pencil in hand. But it also has A LOT of plates spinning at any given time, and some of those plates don't need to be in the picture at all (Aaron's story, in particular, needed to be pared down). Some of the 17th century storyline gets so bogged down in the history itself and minute details that it was easy to put the book aside for awhile. I was always drawn back in, but oh boy did it drag sometimes. Also, the "big twist" right at the end just didn't land for me. It made me eye-roll pretty dang hard, actually. Why the pressure for twist endings these days? Ugh.
Still, I'm here for Ester and Helen (and the Patricias--excellent side characters). This book is weighted with ideas we should all be grappling with daily. Happy for that reminder.
This book takes two timelines, first, Helen Watt, a history professor grappling with infirmity and impending (forced) retirement and her new graduate assistant, Aaron Levy--basically a parody of the cocksure, smarmy grad student--assigned to help her with a discovery of a cache of 17th century letters that are important for Jewish scholarship and will, eventually, offer extraordinary insights into the period. Aaron is "assigned" to Helen because he's at a standstill in both his life and dissertation. They abhor each other immediately and part of the story is the way their relationship ebbs and flows, leading from loathing to reluctant acceptance to respect and even devotion.
The second timeline is the cache of discovered papers, which leads to the shocking discovery of a female scribe for a once-prominent Rabbi blinded during the Inquisition. Ester Velasquez is an unnatural thing--a learned woman thirsting for more knowledge--and we follow with Helen and Aaron her journey through scribing for the ailing Rabbi, through falling in love even though she has no wish to marry, through the London plague. There are basic questions of survival but then also what does survival mean if you are not allowed to be who you are? Ester is a remarkable female character, complex and often hard to like yet fierce, always searching for a way to learn more, to resist becoming the wife and mother society wants her to be. The book, with the overlapping storylines also becomes a kind of mystery--we know some of Ester's lifepoints before she gets to them in her telling, and there is a competing group of scholars working with the cache...who will triumph in publishing first? That Kadish can achieve the amount of tension she does with a story about historical papers and academic intrigue is, in a word, astonishing.
So ultimately this is a book that asks what it means to live a life: to love, to learn, to suffer. How can one find out who they are and then live a life true to that discovery? For Ester, it is how to find a way to live the life of a learned woman with one of the brightest minds of her time, forever hidden and struggling towards the light; for Aaron, it is figuring out who he even is beyond the veneer of charm and then finding the courage to embrace whatever he finds; for Helen, it is facing each day carrying enormous regrets that color every choice she makes--how to reconcile her past with the dwindling days she has left? These are lonely people with bright inner-lives trying to connect, trying to learn, trying to mesh their desires with the world in which they live. For the women especially, the world just doesn't want them to achieve their desires.
It's significant that these characters, no matter which era, struggle with the same things. The past always informs the present but can also be full of traps and pitfalls; it can trap you if you're not careful. If you like philosophy, Spinoza is a focal point, Hobbes makes an appearance, and Shakespeare hovers over every page. The allusions resonate.
This book, especially the last two parts, is a remarkable achievement. So erudite and thoughtful and rich. I had to read it with a pencil in hand. But it also has A LOT of plates spinning at any given time, and some of those plates don't need to be in the picture at all (Aaron's story, in particular, needed to be pared down). Some of the 17th century storyline gets so bogged down in the history itself and minute details that it was easy to put the book aside for awhile. I was always drawn back in, but oh boy did it drag sometimes. Also, the "big twist" right at the end just didn't land for me. It made me eye-roll pretty dang hard, actually. Why the pressure for twist endings these days? Ugh.
Still, I'm here for Ester and Helen (and the Patricias--excellent side characters). This book is weighted with ideas we should all be grappling with daily. Happy for that reminder.