A couple of nights ago, due to Nigel taking a few hours off from crying (boy I got lucky), I finished “The Genizah at the House of Shepher” by Tamar Yellin. (As you can see, I am falling behind. That last “Favorite Album” post has been in the making for over a week.)
Here is a description thanks to Amazon.Com and Publishers Weekly:
The history of the family Shepher is a “record of theft, domestic discord, mutual blame-laying and bad luck.” The discovery of a mysterious, handwritten volume of the Bible, apparently the property of biblical scholar Shulamit Shepher’s great-grandfather, brings Shulamit from her home in England back to her family’s small bungalow in Jerusalem. There, in an attempt to unravel the book’s origins, she recounts her family’s troubled history, beginning with her great-grandfather Shalom, who disappeared for two years and returned addlebrained and clutching this strange book, known thereafter only as the Codex. Shulamit has inherited her great-grandfather’s scholarly interests, but not his traditional Jewish practice. Still, she welcomes the attentions of a religious zealot named Gideon Ben Gibreel - who seeks the Codex for reasons he won’t reveal - even as she tries to decide whether the book is the key to reviving her academic career. More than anything, this wide-ranging novel is a meditation on the power of the Holy City, able to restore or shake the faith of whoever enters. As Shulamit notes, “Of all the cities of the world Jerusalem has one of the shabbiest gates of arrival, and coming or going one is greeted by graves.”
I had seen a few good reviews of this book floating around the internet, and one from someone who’s opinion I am finding carries a lot of weight with me. (Even if some of the books he enjoys are on other levels, and are probably too complex for me.) So after breezing quickly through this description, I expected a bit of an adventure story, though not a physical one for the characters. What I found was it’s more along the lines of a story of character, and the Codex, though important, is only the source of this story, not THE story.
There are many layers to the book through the back-story of Shulamit’s ancestors. At the beginning, and probably more having to do with not having the right amount of time to devout to reading, this book seemed to lag with all the information and background given. But I was seeing it as background, not the story that the author was trying to tell. Once I fell into that line of thinking, the book opened up for me, and I found the story of the Shepher family and the effects of the Codex. And I found it very interesting.
We get to see deep into Shulamit’s life with and beyond her family. A love interest from the past that haunts her, but not in the classical sense. And the reader gets to meet him years down the road. Though the meeting is brief, it really enlarges the scope of her character. Another interesting point is to see how her father effects her throughout her life, but we don’t get to see deep into him until near the end of the book. He almost appears very enigmatic through the first half. Then very close to the end of the book, the end of his life, we see the true effects that he left on Shulamit.
There were two confusing items for me, though they didn’t take away much from my enjoyment. I wasn’t sure about a few of the character, whether they were brothers and sisters, or aunts and uncles of Shulamit’s father. And I was also confused during the present time conversations of who should be keeper of the Codex. I didn’t understand each persons’ claims. Though maybe the reader is not meant to, since Shulamit tries to stay out of it. It also may have been kept that way because sometimes those family claims to heirlooms end up very confusing in real life.
I have too many books that I want to read, and I find new ones every once in a while, or have others suggested to me. It is unfortunate, because there are a few that I would like to read again. But I see life as being too short and having too many other things to do (like being a father) to spend time re-reading books right now. This would be a prime candidate though. I enjoyed it the first time, and I am sure I could get more out of it reading it again.
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