I think incessantly of death, of oblivion, how nothing lasts, not even memory when the one who remembers is gone… 


I remember nothing. I remember everything. I believe everything. I believe nothing.



If there were ever any doubt that Ozick is a master storyteller, here’s your proof.



Do yourself a favor and skip the blurb; don’t read the synopsis. Let Petrie’s fictional monologue take you over; let yourself get to know him, his regrets, his idiosyncrasies, his losses, his attempts at connection with others. 



Imagine an interior monologue—shaped just as America shakes off the first half of the twentieth century—that is an examination of the shackles of memory, a questioning of who "owns" whose history and legacy, and a laying bare of the guilt involved in carrying your own and others' stories into the next generation.

Imagine this told with the baroque stylings of James within a Proustian project of aging, of facing both one’s mortality and the death of an age, wherein Dreyfus makes an appearance and for which fans of Bolano’s slim monologues and Marias’s own Jamesian verbosities will salivate at the mouth. 



Do yourself another favor and read this all in one gulp. ( )

I didn’t really understand it, but I liked it anyway, it was very enjoyable to read, the writing was almost like poetry. My first Ozick novel, I’ll have to try another. ( )

In Antiquities, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, one of the seven elderly trustees of the now-defunct (for thirty-four years) Temple Academy for Boys, is preparing a memoir of his days at the school, intertwined with the troubling distractions of present events. As he navigates, with faltering recall, between the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school's ethos and his fascination with his own family's heritage--in particular, his illustrious cousin, the renowned archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie--he reconstructs the passions of a childhood encounter with the oddly named Ben-Zion Elefantin, a mystifying older pupil who claims descent from Egypt's Elephantine Island.

Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie is one sick puppy. Now a retired lawyer, he is preparing a memoir of his years as a student at Temple Academy in the late 19th Century.

Simultaneously arrogant, judgmental and needy. Critical of everyone and anyone including his colleagues, Temple staff, his son, (who understandably wants little to do with him), and Jews. Ironically, he is drawn to Jews and befriends an older socially withdrawn classmate, Ben-Zion Elefantin which gets him taunted by his classmates. Petrie is hurt by Elefantin's dismissal of Petrie's father's collection of Middle Eastern artifacts. Seems Elefantin's parents have virtually abandoned him at Temple Academy to go antiquing in the Middle East. Ben-Zion believes they are the only ones to recognize true and valuable antiques, and will not even look at Petrie’s father’s collection! But so many years later Lloyd wonders what became of Ben-Zion after he left Temple Academy.

Petrie interacted with another Jewish student, Ned Greenhill. Years later Petrie continued to meet with Greenhill for dinner periodically. But, in his memoir he writes, that he never considered inviting a Jew to his home to meet his family! Just when I hoped Lloyd would show some small movement to normalcy and humanity, he disappoints falling back on what is familiar, his deeply entrenched cultural Anti-Semitism.

His memoirs indicate his obvious jealousy of both Ned who had become a judge, and of Ned’s son succeeding in the real estate field. Petrie is very disappointed in the career direction his son has taken, now floundering to get attention for one of his many creative concepts.

I see Petrie as pitifully stuck in a putrid stagnant time and culture swamp. He may have taken a few tiny steps toward change when he was a young student but despite getting a good education, he didn’t use his brain, or his heart. He just followed along the restrictive, racist, uncharitable path his family and community had taken for generations, and he was a miserable human being for doing so.

Ozick’s books are disturbingly visceral. She brilliantly and forcibly pulls the reader in and makes one feel and think.

Excellent writing.

skimmed - due to her reputation and the marvelous cover - couldn't get interested enough to read closely ( )