The River Midnight - Hardcover

Nattel, Lilian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684853035 ISBN 13: 9780684853031

Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD, 1999

Synopsis

An award-winning Canadian short story writer presents her debut novel that turns her own family history into the rich story of five women, Polish Jews living in a ghetto outside Warsaw before the cataclysm of World War II. 100,000 first printing. BOMC & QPB Alt.

About this title

Review:

'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

A young Canadian writer's brilliant first novel... A marvelous debut and a loving anatomy of the vanished world of the shtetls (Kirkus Reviews)

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

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

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

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

'As enchanting at times as a Chagall mural...Nattel writes with refreshing bawdiness... Uses imagery to lush effect' New York Times Book Review (longer review in file)

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: Prentice Hall & IBD
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684853035
• ISBN 13: 9780684853031
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 414