A mesmerizing tale of love in a time of extraordinary trials.
In this historical novel, an unlikely Jewish couple—she’s an obsessed bibliophile and he can’t read—struggles under an increasingly antisemitic Russia in the late 19th century.
Esther Leving is a remarkable young woman—a voracious reader, she can write in six languages by the age of 15. She’s also defiantly independent and opinionated. Esther angrily chafes at the “subordination of women and persecution of non-believers” as well as the oppression experienced by Jews, a phenomenon she’s familiar with living in Horodno in the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. For all her intellectual liveliness, Esther is essentially friendless, hampered by an injured foot, and completely disinterested in the “array of suitors” her parents send her way. She pines to be a writer and expresses disdain for the restrictions of marriage. But when she meets Bernard Garfinkle, the son of a vodka distiller, she falls in love, even after she learns his peculiar secret—despite a nimble mind, he never learned to read, a failing that makes for an odd pairing astutely captured by Freed-Thall: “I love a boy who can’t read. If I hadn’t gotten to know him first, he’d be a book returned to the shelves unopened. Single words aren’t the problem, but when they gather, all talking at once, he lurches forward, pauses, sounds out, only to lose his way and backtrack.” Esther agrees to teach Bernard to read and opens a bookshop he builds for her. But with the ascension of Alexander III comes virulent, violent anti-Jewish sentiment, a historical development rigorously researched and dramatically conveyed by the author. Nevertheless, this novel is at its core a love story—Freed-Thall sensitively limns the ways in which the couple’s devotion transcends their deep differences, not just literary, but also religious. Bernard is devoutly spiritual, and Esther tends to see religious belief as an instrument of thoughtless prejudice. This is a captivating book, historically authentic and movingly romantic.
A mesmerizing tale of love in a time of extraordinary trials.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-57869-067-1
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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