The River Midnight - Softcover

Nattel, Lilian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676972608 ISBN 13: 9780676972603

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2000

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:

"Richly imagined, sensuous in its details [and] spiced with energetic dialogue, The River Midnight offers pleasures on every page." --The Globe and Mail

"Enchanting.-- Dynamic women, feckless men.-- Nattel writes with refreshing bawdiness [and] uses imagery to lush effect.-- Vibrant-- Engaging." --The New York Times

"To read this novel is to watch Nattel as she weaves a marvellous, meticulous fabric of family, friendship, myth, and memory." --Quill & Quire

"The novel's undeniable pleasure is due to Nattel's intricate evocation of a lost world and the sense of privileged intimacy she bestows on her readers." --Calgary Herald (3/27/99)

"Lilian Nattel's mesmerizing first novel...is not simply remarkable as a historical text. Nattel's flair for the telling detail is just one treasure in her bag of writer's tricks...painterly and precise." --Washington Post (3/23/99)

"Nattel's emotional, panoramic narrative proves extraordinary...vibrant, imaginative debut..." --Entertainment Weekly (2/15/99)

"... in her ambitious and highly pleasing first novel ... Nattel weaves a tapestry-like portrait of Blaszka ... Richly imagined, sensuous in its details, spiced with energetic dialogue, The River Midnight offers pleasures on every page." --The Globe and Mail (Feb.6/99)

"To read this novel is to watch Nattel as she weaves a marvellous, meticulous fabric of family, friendship, myth, and memory." --Quill & Quire

"Complex and multifaceted, The River Midnight investigates traditional gender roles and how sexual thraldom can become an incentive to change and revolution...its greatest power is in its historical detail." --Canadian Forum Magazine

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: Vintage Canada
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0676972608
• ISBN 13: 9780676972603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416