I Am Forbidden by Anouk MarkovitsAnd Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
Well shit, I was totally not expecting that twist at the end. KAPOW.
I gobbled this up in one evening and -- I don't think it's a novel per se? (yeah I know that is such a useless categorization when you have books like the Odyssey and David Markson) -- it was more like a very long tale by a storyteller, or a collection of them. It had a real fairytale atmosphere, even though it was about horribly modern events....it's a real hybrid. These aren't even criticisms. Obviously the book knocked me on my ass and parts of it are beautiful and nearly all the characters are amazing. It reminded me a little bit of Briar Rose by Jane Yolen except the focus was all on the women.
I do think there was one big structural problem with the book -- up to A's leaving the family it's pretty much a day-by-day chronologically intact novel with minute psychological observations, and after that, BOOM, major time skips, and the chapters are much shorter -- the wedding, then five years! then ten years! then R's birth! then ten years! then R getting married! then J's birth! and so on. I can see why; I mean, if the entire story was written in the style of that first half, it would fill about four volumes. WWII and the Holocaust are pretty much giant lacunae (which fits the general theme) because those would completely drown out the other story.
I think this narration -- X begat Y begat Z -- is also deliberately Biblical, and totally in keeping with the idea of survival at any cost, the survival of generations, of Jews -- how do you survive as a Jew? How does Judaism survive? At what point do you stop being Jewish because of the terrible things you have to do to live? Is it even possible to make a bargain with God? -- it's easy to imagine the Rebbe or Josef thinking Just this once, and I'll confess what I did later....later....later.... and "later" never comes because confessing what you did would destroy the result, the reason why you did it.
Anyway, it's beautifully written and mesmerizing and gripping and even if the structure's wonky and there's some first novel-itis there, I'd buy anything else this author wrote unseen in a heartbeat. HEAR THAT AMAZON
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