Customer Reviews

The Family Orchard

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

...two things i knew nothing about when i picked up this book. I found this family story of succeeding generations, renewing the cycle of life over and over, to be fascinating. The author takes the bare facts her father writes down and lets her imagination take her back to tell the stories of her ancestors, starting in Jerusalem in the 1830s. Her use of language is wonderful, and she adds tidbits of etymology throughout. The book is enhanced by 31 illustrations, a growing family tree, and an appendix explaining orchard terms.

I'd like to refute the negative reviews that I don't think do the author justice. People seemed not to like this book for two reasons: it had graphic sex and it was boring. The only graphic sex was in the first chapter, for those that didnt read any further. In no way is this book filled with graphic sex or gratuitous sex scenes thrown in just to sell the book. One person compared it to pornography and I can't imagine what book they were reading! I also did not find it boring, when I read fiction I want to learn about new things and places. Not everyone has been to Israel or has studied the history of pre-1948 Palestine. I am amazed this book has't come out in paperback (update, it appears it is now in paperback and i'm glad to see people reading it). I would highly recommend it and already have to some friends.

Every once in a while a writer captivates even the most disparate critics. Such an author is Nomi Eve, whose debut novel has garnered accolades for its imagination, narrative strength, and lyrical prose.

For those unfamiliar with "The Family Orchard," it is a multigenerational novel encompassing five generations who live through Palestine's turbulent history and the birth of Israel. Readers are privy to love affairs and long hidden family secrets by characters who are fully drawn and fascinating - Ms. Eve is a master storyteller as she relates her tale through the mouths of a father and a fictional Nomi.

To hear the accomplished Fritz Weaver and the inspired Polly Draper bring these individuals to life is tantamount to Broadway's finest. Tony Award-winner Weaver is by turns taciturn, sometimes didactic, while the ebullient Polly Draper never misses a beat in embroidering memory. This pairing is inspired, as are their readings.

"The Family Orchard" is a book I was saving for a rainy day. It had gotten wonderful reviews and I had been looking forward to it. Unfortunately it didn't live up to its billing.

The story is a rambling account of a Palestinian (later Israeli) Jewish family. At the roots of the family tree are two 19th century European Jewish immigrants to Jerusalem. They marry, have kids, their kids marry and have kids, etc. down to the present. The book is episodic, with the most detailed narrative devoted to the most recent branches of the family, who, aptly enough, make their living as fruit growers and orchard owners. The author uses the literary conceit of matching her father's scanty account of the family history with her own imaginings of it. At times this is effective, but at other times it has an artificial ring to it. The main metaphor of the book, that of grafting new stock onto old, is given a rather heavy handed factual treatment at the end of the book--all you ever wanted to know about tree grafting but never cared to ask.

Overall, I found the book frustrating. There were parts that were absolutely charming and parts that were quite powerful. The story of Gabi, the "different" child, was as heartrending a description of a family quietly devastated as any I've read. The descriptions of the twins and their grandfather were wonderful, as was the story of the founding pair. But the major problem was that the book was just too episodic. Several of the earlier chapters had been published separately as short stories, and it showed.

I wouldn't quite call the book disjointed, because I think that Eve was trying to hint at the fragmentary nature of what we know about our family histories and the individuals from who we are descended. Most of us know only a few scattered facts about the lives of our forebears. There is much that is unknown to us and we have to fill the gaps with our imagination. I think that's what Eve is doing in this work that seems to be based on her own family history. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it?s an interesting attempt nonetheless.

This book is a fabulous read! I could not put it down once I started. The author has succeeded on two levels: first the book has a great narrative; you really care about these people. Second - the author weaves a spell of enchantment of mythology, memory and sensuality that pervades the story with an atmosphere of love for both family history and the more direct physical love of a woman for a man.

It is hard to believe that this is a debut novel. Eve paints vivid characters that you can reach out and touch. The characters experience the glory of everyday life from the mundane to the extraordinary, from love and sex to death and sorrow. Each generation in this family "tree" captures a different facet of this experience we call life. In addition, the unique structure of the novel is extraordinary. The interplay of narrative voices (reminiscent of Talmudic commentaries) reflects the interplay of voices in everday life. This reader appreciates how the author questions the notion of where truth lies. This is a "big" book, Ms. Eve has masterfully succeeded in creating a new way to tell a story that everyone can relate to. Tell your family and friends that they will be rewarded many times over when they read The Family Orchard.

I wanted to like this book. I certainly admire the author's research and use of language. She writes moving passages that make you feel you are there. Unfortunately this does not occur with her characterizations. Perhaps because there are so many I felt no emotional connection to any of them. The time spent with each generation is so short that you never get to know any of them. Since they were all mysteries,they seemed very much alike (the men and women both). Without any connection to the characters I found the book a great struggle to get through.

The Family Orchard started out to be an engrossing and lovingly written family novel. The characters were presented with great warmth and charity. However, about halfway through the book, it began to bog down, with the spiritual scenes confusing and obscuring the true nature of the characters. Also, as the story approached current times, the characters' stories and motives were presented in a cursory way, leaving this reader wishing that the author had stopped about 100 pages earlier. I loved, however, the writer's juxtoposing of the narrator's storytelling with the consise and straightforeward factual account of her father.