These are difficulties any writer of speculative fiction will understand, of course, and this novel succeeds on so many levels that these are minor complaints.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. And there are moments when dialogue, character development, and storytelling are subordinate to the novel's conceit. As for the actual mechanics of how Rachel and Elazar become immortal….Some readers are likely to feel there’s not enough explanation, while others might feel that there’s not enough mystery.
And all these temporal excursions resonate with Rachel’s present-which is also the reader’s present. Horn takes the reader into the past when Rachel is lost in memory like anyone might be lost in memory it just happens that Rachel’s memory goes back rather far. This novel is more intimate than sweeping, though. They lose children and partners to the Romans, to the Spanish Inquisition, and to the Holocaust. Without the efforts of their son, Judaism might not have survived the destruction of the Second Temple. The history they experience is, quite particularly, Jewish history. They also start new lives and new families and travel to new worlds.
Over the centuries, these two come together and part again and again. Her child’s father, Elazar, has done the same. Rachel’s memories extend all the way back to first-century Jerusalem, where she sacrificed her own death to save the life of her little son. When the story begins, Rachel is living in New York, surrounded by children and grandchildren who remind her of the many, many, many children and grandchildren she has known and lost. The idea that life derives its meaning from death is hardly new, but Horn manages to turn this commonplace notion into a powerful-and occasionally playful-exploration of what it is to be mortal. A fresh exploration of memory and the future from the award-winning author of A Guide for the Perplexed (2013, etc.).
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