ANYTHING BUT YES

A Jewish woman fights forced conversion in 18th-century Rome in Davidow’s historical novel.

The author takes inspiration from a diary written by Anna del Monte shortly after her 1749 kidnapping and imagines the interior lives of everyone involved in the community-shaping event. The 18-year-old Anna, a member of one of the prominent families in Rome’s Jewish ghetto, is taken into custody by the Catholic church under a law that allows the church to attempt to convert her by force. As she remains imprisoned for nearly two weeks, subjected to sermons, assaults, and other forms of persuasion, Anna remains secure in both her Judaism and her confidence in her own arguments, but suffers from her treatment and from the agony of never knowing what will happen next or when she might be freed. The story moves between Anna’s cell and the outside world as her relatives mobilize to fight for her freedom, clerics experience mixed feelings about the righteousness of their work, and other Roman Jews try to survive in a system designed to harass them out of their religious beliefs. The author creates rich backstories for the individuals Anna encounters, including a nun who converted from Judaism, a noblewoman who relies on contraceptives obtained from the ghetto, the archbishop in charge of her captivity, and a peasant woman selling buttons on the street. Anna is an engaging protagonist, authentic to her time and circumstances but also comprehensible to the modern reader. While the narrative can feel repetitive at times, with the incessant conversion attempts and repeated references to the del Monte family’s social status, it also brings together the plot’s many threads into a satisfying resolution. The authorial voice tends toward the portentous and melodramatic, but in a way that recalls 18th-century literary style (“For nearly two centuries, the Jews of Rome have been crowded into a pestilential enclosure in the lowest part of the city, their rights gradually but continually diminished, and yet the Church has not converted a tenth of them”), and Davidow’s incorporation of significant historical detail further brings Anna’s world to life.

An intricately detailed novel of resistance and community.