The River Midnight - Hardcover

Nattel, Lilian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0676971539 ISBN 13: 9780676971538

Publisher: Knopf Canada, 1999

Synopsis

Myth meets history in Blaszka, a fictional village in Poland and the site of this beautiful, multi-layered novel set in 1894. Listen. You can hear the excitement in the village square, the flimsy stalls piled high with wares, and in the centre Misha the midwife laughing. The wayward heart of Blaszka, she holds safe all the local secrets, including the stories of the four vilda hayas, "the wild creatures," as she and her girlfriends were known. Although the women have grown apart, unexpected love, a daughter imprisoned, and two orphan children sent home from America, entwine their lives again - all as Europe moves headlong towards chaos.

In this magnificent novel of magic and mystery, Lilian Nattel has resurrected a vanished world that explores the tensions between men and women, and celebrates the wordless bonds of friendship in a way that is simply unparalleled.

About this title

Review:

Poignantly and humorously evokes shtetl life... Beautifully captures a lost way of life and its enduring sense of community (Publishers Weekly)

'A young Canadian writer's brilliant first novel... A marvelous debut and a loving anatomy of the vanished world of the shtetls that merits comparison with the best work of Singer' Kirkus Reviews

'Poignantly and humorously evokes shtetl life... Beautifully captures a lost way of life and its enduring sense of community' Publishers Weekly

A young Canadian writer's brilliant first novel... A marvelous debut and a loving anatomy of the vanished world of the shtetls that merits comparison with the best work of Singer (Kirkus Reviews)

Brilliantly patterned minutiae of everyday life...supple narrative technique' (Time)

'Brilliantly patterned minutiae of everyday life...supple narrative technique' Time (longer review in file)

'This is a remarkable and skilfully crafted first novel.' Historical Review

A heady mix of folksy Jewishness and feminism... Hugely sentimental, but with a rollicking energy that overcomes rational objections (Independent on Sunday)

The narrative is imbued with a touch of magic and fantasy, making for a story that is unusual, captivating and entertaining (The Times)

A plucky first novel...a jubilant feast of story-telling (Daily Mail)

A stunningly memorable first novel (Good Housekeeping)

From the Author:

Family history, research, magic of human decency.
I grew up in Montreal. My mother was born in Plotsk, Poland (that's why I situated the fictional village of Blaszka near Plotsk, "Plock" in Polish). My father was born in Crakow. My parents spoke Yiddish at home when they didn't want us kids to understand, so of course I learned it well.

There's a picture that comes to my mind when I think of the shtetl (a Jewish village or town in Eastern Europe), though it's not directly connected with it. When my maternal grandmother remarried, we had a party at our house to celebrate. I remember my mother and her best friend, Marisha, spontaneously dancing with a handkerchief held between them. People were singing and clapping while they danced and I have never seen my mother more beautiful as when she danced with her friend. In that moment I saw a wordless and kinetic bond of friendship, in fact of intimacy and joy, between women. My mother's friend Marisha died of breast cancer the summer I turned sixteen. It is in honour of her that I invented the story about Misha's name: a nickname for "Marisha," the Polish name for Miriam.

The shtetl is a place both real and mythical. It is a dream, now; it no longer exists. But it has a history, & it was important to me to be accurate. I read about a hundred books in researching The River Midnight, looked at a number of collections of photographs, watched Yiddish films that pre-dated the war. The best sources were memoirs, essays and fiction written between 1881 and 1905.I discovered the shtetl to be a place where people had hopes and love and crime and talent and idiocy just as we do, now, while at the same time it had a particular character: rich, complex, interesting.

I was fascinated by the discovery of women's prayers, called tekhinas. Women prayed in Yiddish from books and pamphlets, some written by men, many by women. Their prayers expressed their daily concerns. New prayers were written all the time to keep up with changes in women's lives. For example, there's a prayer for a husband who has to travel for business, perhaps peddling. The woman prays that he won't gamble or take up with other women.

My family wasn't terribly observant when I was growing up, but we celebrated all the Jewish holidays, and our home was permeated by stories, songs, and customs that expressed both a Jewish and universal experience. On Passover my father used to say that everyone has been a slave in some kind of "Egypt". He himself had literally been a slave in a concentration camp and had been liberated. So I knew that what happened to people in "history" is also happening now: past and present and future all coming together.

Magic expresses the mythical quality of the shtetl, and it reflects the magical world view that comes out of the mix of superstition and spirituality. But in the end, I believe, human action is what matters. The mystery of life is something beyond magic. What could be more wondrous than ordinary human decency?

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Canada
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0676971539
• ISBN 13: 9780676971538
• Binding: Hardcover