A review by kairhone
Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick

challenging tense slow-paced

3.75

Petrie the protagonist chronicles his boyhood years while living in the repurposed shell of his prior boarding school. His recollections center on his fixated pride of his father's treasure seeking in Egypt around 1918 and the odd friendship between himself a Jewish boy. There is a homoerotic lean to his description of their playing chess and falling to the floor in a tangle of skinny limbs. He returns again and again to this memory with shame. Too, he mentions with progressively more detail that he had a lifelong affair with his secretary, Margaret, whom he called Peg. Very few mentions of his wife, Miranda.   

Petrie’s father and his distant cousin participated in did indeed discover the remains of a temple, papyrus scrolls and other evidence proving the presence of a previously unknown 5th-century B.C. Jewish community on Egypt’s Elephantine Island. But that community had long since vanished, making Elefantin’s story, if not his very existence, fantastical. Ozick leaves it to the reader to decide the truth of Petrie’s encounter with Elefantin and his elusive ancient faith. 

Very reminiscent of Remains of the Day and/or Brideshead Revisited.