The Family Orchard [Hardcover]

Nomi Eve (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2000

A magical, multigenerational saga encompassing two hundred years in the life of an unforgettable family--a book of love stories, ill-fated and blessed, sensuous as a dream, unfolding in a time and a place where fable is more potent than fact, where the imagination is more powerful than any truth, where the line between myth and history has all but dissolved: Jerusalem, from the early years of the nineteenth century to the present.

They left Eastern Europe for Israel and emerged, six generations later, in America: Esther, the family matriarch, who was lured by the smell of baking bread into the baker's arms; her granddaughter, Avra the thief, who stole a cow's tongue and married a man with strong fists and very fast feet; Miriam, a seamstress who sewed spells into her cloths and whose mesmerizing beauty inadvertently transformed Kovna's House of Study into a container of pure carnal frustration; the twins Zohar and Moshe, who ran across the walls of the Old City as boys, and  as men faced a tragedy that would haunt their family for generations to come; Eliezer, Zohar's son, who once tried to conjure a golem in his father's garden; and Eliezer's American-born daughter, who would one day take his stories and cast a spell of her own.  

Nomi Eve's debut novel is a rich tapestry of Jewish life and humor and yearning, woven from timeless themes: the evolution of family, the setting down of roots, the sorrow of immigrants and the joy of pioneers, the secrets that bind families together and the legends that sustain them. In language as uniquely vibrant as the characters who inhabit it, The Family Orchard captures the intoxications of love, tradition, and history, and the ineluctable forces that shape them. A deliciously engrossing novel, at once epic and intimate, from a storyteller of beguiling power and wisdom.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The multigenerational history of a family that prospers and falters, blooms and wanes, as do the fortunes of Israel, the country in which it is set, is only a surface description of what Eve accomplishes in this vivid debut. Intensely imagined, at once sensual, spiritual and humorous, an artful mixture of dreams and reality, legend and fact, this impressive novel takes risks with narrative method and succeeds beautifully. Three layers of voices mingle in every chapter. One that begins: "I tell" or "I write" is the voice of a narrator named Nomi Eve, who follows six generations of her family from 1800s Palestine through the creation of Israel to the present day. Factual material about the history of the region, family milestones and the profession of pardesan, or "orchard man," is interpolated in sections introduced by the words: "My father writes...." The most extensive passages in each chapter are from a third-person point of view and weave a bewitching story of love, fulfillment and loss; marriages, births and deaths; privations, war and tragedy. Here the mood is fabulist, verging on magical realism, as myth and legend illuminate the lives of characters placed by fate in a turbulent part of the world. Each generation experiences conflict: with the Turks, the British and the Arabs. The rich characterizations begin with Yochanan and Esther, both from eastern Europe, who marry in Jerusalem in 1837. Their granddaughter, Avra, marries into a Russian immigrant family that has established a small orchard in Petach Tikvah, a town near Tel Aviv, in 1909; that couple's great-granddaughter is Nomi Eve. While Eve has not used the family's real name, it's obvious that her lovingly detailed story is based on autobiographical fact. The city of Jerusalem is a vibrant character in its own right; and the horticultural material is explained with intriguing clarity. Thirty-one linecuts of old prints augment a most unusual novel. Agent, Amanda Urban. 100,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB alternates; 12-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-History and fiction merge to create the family legends of six generations of Jews in Jerusalem. The narrator's father relates the known facts from 1837 to the present; then, inspired by these sketchy tales, the narrator weaves vivid fantasies about these people. She imagines her ancestors' lives to have been quirky, scandalous, sad, funny, and moving. The book's pleasing visual design creates a sense of authenticity as it charms with its varying typography, historical views of the city and its people, botanical illustrations, and diagrams of the evolving family tree. The narrator begins by describing the somewhat unconventional sex life of the earliest generation. Then, in colorful and increasingly complex tales of their descendants, she develops this theme into a celebration of the life of a family. Like the citrus orchards they cultivate, they accept "grafts" of spouses from many countries and cultures. The botanical metaphor is so skillfully employed that, by the end of the book, even its "Manual of Orchard Terms" is fascinating. The final story is about the narrator. A young American, she has come to Jerusalem to discover (and, when necessary, to invent) her family's roots, as she begins a new generation. This is an unusual, richly rewarding book. It is not for unsophisticated readers; but for the right teen, it can be experienced with delight and interest now, then rediscovered with greater understanding.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (September 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375410767
• ISBN-13: 978-0375410765
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,034,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superlative book, November 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Family Orchard (Hardcover)

I finished The Family Orchard recently. It took only a few daysto read it this first time because the world Eve has created is filledwith so much love and interest that I couldn't put it down. I snuckit in on my 'lunch' break, grabbed a few pages on my walk home, andpeeked at it in the elevator to and from my office. Reading it waslike wrapping myself in a cashmere throw with a whimsical design --both luxurious and casual, warm and inviting. There is so much that Ilearned in it. I knew very little about Israeli history, for one.The reading of this book has inspired me to learn about the manypeople who held this land for so long and the struggle to definefreedom that seems never ending there.

I felt that I met so manynew friends -- people I wanted to spend my evenings with and now theyhave all returned to their own lands, the visit is over. I also felta bit of shame, of embarrassment because of the intimacy of thestories... I mean the intimate knowledge that I gained as a readerinto who these people were (or who Eve imagined they were). Theirlives were dreamlike, magical just like our own dream lives. Loveholds the book together -- a love for family, ... a couple's love andthe author's love of words. The strength and abundance of love likethis is rare and usually shared with only a few people. To share itso powerfully and with such imagination made me blush with pleasureand shyness.

It was a superlative book, the kind you find sometimesburied in your 'must read' stack; the kind that you share with friendsbut share with yourself over and over again through rereads; the kindthat changes perception and opens a window into the world behind thetangible.

Pick it up and read it.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, November 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Family Orchard (Paperback)

I had very high expectations for this book. The jacket reviews were superlative. What's more, like the characters in the book, my own grandmother was the seventh generation of her family to be born in Palestine. My father grew up in Petach Tikvah, where much of the book is set.

I found the book to be boring and odd. The theme that suposedly bound the story together was the grafting of trees. Unfortunately, this thread was not as profound or as interesting as the author apparantly wanted it to be.

With a tone of magical wonder, the author told the story largely through the sexual history and other pecadillos of the members of the story's family. It wasn't enough to create a captivating novel. This book succeeded in making magical realism annoying by telling the reader how magical and wonderful things were instead of telling the story in such a way as to make the reader feel the magic and wonder themselves. The story was boring. If I hadn't brought it to savor on a long train ride, I don't think I would have finished it.

Like Myla Goldberg's Bee Season, and much worse, Pete Hamill's Snow in August, this book also delves into the Kabbalistic concept of the Golem, or conjured monster. Enough already! It's been done.

I do think that there is a good novel waiting to be written about the Jews who lived in Palestine before World War I, because they surely were unusual and certainly passionate about being there. Sadly, and to my great disappointment, this was not that book.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Multi-generational tale of fact and legend, intertwined., January 2, 2001

By 

Julie Lovisa (Indiana USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Family Orchard (Hardcover)

As her father writes a factual history of the family tree, Nomi writes the legends surrounding the history. It is interesting to see the short, unimaginative paragraphs written by her father contrasting to the poetic, quirky, stories that she tells about the generations of her family. Starting with Esther and Yochanon, who are married only four months when she begins an affair with the baker which only serves to enhance the marriage...leading to their son Eliezer, who after his mother dies while birthing him, is gifted with the stepsister he will fall in love with and marry...leading to light-fingered Avra, who steals not for material acquisition (she often replaces the things she steals with other things that she has stolen) but because it is an intrinsic part of her being...These wonderfully told stories and offbeat personalities illuminate the Schine/Sepher family's lives with a bright light of warmth, humor, passion, and understanding. My only complaint is that by the time you finally get to know and like a character in the novel, their chapter has ended and you're introduced to a whole new set of people. I understand that it's necessary to condense in a multi-generation book that spans a century and a half, but there are some people in the book that I would have liked to have gotten to know better!