Rachel Shihor
Auteur van Days Bygone (Sylph Cahiers No. 7)
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I am not having much luck with #WITMonth so far. I abandoned the first two (highly regarded) books that I had on the TBR: Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki (meh) and The Vegetarian by Han Kang, (more violence against women). And now I've made it all the way through Days of Peace by Rachel Shihor, translated by Sara Tropper and Esther Frumkin, but I nearly abandoned it too. It is almost — but not quite — just another Miserable Marriage, and I have had enough of those.
Naomi seems to be a passive observer in her own life, drifting into, and then out of, an unsatisfactory marriage. You'd think that after all these years of feminism an educated architect would know that marrying an orthodox Jew would mean that she'd have to submit to the domestic impacts of that, and that as a secular Jew from Tel Aviv, she'd find that difficult. But no, Naomi, goes along with it all, until on a trip to Poland she finally makes a decision and leaves him.
This moment of crisis in their marriage is signalled by her refusal to delay her departure to suit him. This is the first time she stands up to him directly.
Days of Peace includes mildly interesting vignettes about all sorts of people in Jerusalem but what saved this novella for me was the descriptions of how Orthodox Jewish life impacted on their relationship because she did not share his religious beliefs. It's not just a matter of having to keep a kosher kitchen. The continuous cycle of religious holidays, with barely enough time to recuperate from their demands, was stressful.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/13/days-of-peace-2019-by-rachel-shihor-translat...… (meer)
Naomi seems to be a passive observer in her own life, drifting into, and then out of, an unsatisfactory marriage. You'd think that after all these years of feminism an educated architect would know that marrying an orthodox Jew would mean that she'd have to submit to the domestic impacts of that, and that as a secular Jew from Tel Aviv, she'd find that difficult. But no, Naomi, goes along with it all, until on a trip to Poland she finally makes a decision and leaves him.
This moment of crisis in their marriage is signalled by her refusal to delay her departure to suit him. This is the first time she stands up to him directly.
...I say, Jochanan, I am leaving here. I have already arranged everything. On Sunday a taxi is coming to take me to Warsaw. A driver has been found. My husband understands immediately. Is everything settled? he asks. Perhaps he expected this. And this is what you were doing while I was away? Who recommended the driver?
After that he falls to musing. — It's not that I don't understand, he says finally, but I have one request, he hesitates, Go ahead, but just not on Sunday. Don't cancel your plans, just postpone them. Tell the driver to come on Tuesday instead. I want to show you more important things. We have not yet seen the Jewish museum, and we will go to the plaza near here from which the Jews were deported to the concentration camps. Let's talk. — I went by myself to the deportation plaza, I say.
—And...? my husband asks.
—And I am leaving on Sunday. (p.139)
Days of Peace includes mildly interesting vignettes about all sorts of people in Jerusalem but what saved this novella for me was the descriptions of how Orthodox Jewish life impacted on their relationship because she did not share his religious beliefs. It's not just a matter of having to keep a kosher kitchen. The continuous cycle of religious holidays, with barely enough time to recuperate from their demands, was stressful.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/13/days-of-peace-2019-by-rachel-shihor-translat...… (meer)
Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk
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The title is a kind of sad joke: Mr Yankinton wanted to change his Russian name to fit in:
In a blurb for another book, a reviewer by name of Mona Reiserer is quoted from the Quarterly Conversation that Shihor's writing penetrates to the truth of the aches and anxieties all people share, though they must generally suffer them alone. In this book, it is the observations of the young child negotiating the intricacies of the new state of Israel, written from the perspective of an older adult many years later.
Amid her memories of being hopelessly outclassed in a dress-up competition; of her delight in books as a respite from the anxieties of family life; and of the escape and demise of a favourite monkey from the zoo, the novella is also a rendition of an Israel different to the assertive, successful state it is today, ranked 27th among the world's wealthy economies. There are poor districts, and there are families poorer than they are, including a cousin who joins the family in the hope that coaching will improve his academic prospects. Father, whose hopes of an academic life were foiled by his exile from Russia, turns out to be a fine, if idiosyncratic teacher, and the boy becomes a geographer — not finding sunken pirate ships as he'd hoped but the editor of a marine research encyclopaedia.
For the narrator's family, there is a miraculous year when the columns of profits began to replace the columns of losses in his business ledger. Her father's steps to improve the family's quality of life consist of buying a book of psalms on parchment instead of paper, and an announcement that brought joy to this little booklover's life...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/20/yankinton-2020-by-rachel-shihor-translated-b...… (meer)