Customer Reviews

The Singing Fire: A Novel

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

 

 

This is a fantastic novel in many senses of the word. Powerfully written and in the tradition of both Jewish fabulist fiction and contemporary magic realism. Centered on women's lives of about 100 years ago but relevant to both our practical and spiritual lives today. And you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy and treasure it!

Lilian Nattel is a good story teller, and she brings to life Jewish London in the 19th century. Why didn't I like this novel more? In "Singing Fire", I never could get involved because I felt the characters and their stories were there to illustrate the times, and to make an appealing novel, while never taking on a life of their own. As a better written novel, I would point out "Women of the Silk" by Gail Tsukiyama, also about women working under very poor conditions, in pre-WWII China.

After enjoying the original style of Nattel's first book, "The River Midnight," I was eager to read this follow-up novel. Like another reviewer, I was disappointed. I found this novel poorly constructed, with a rather contrived story line and cardboard characters to match. Characters like the Squire (Nehama's pimp in the first part of the book) and Emilia's father were one-dimensional, simply evil people with absolutely no complexity. I even found the main characters, Nehama and Emilia very difficult to identify or empathize with.

Many aspects of the book ranged from stretching it to highly unrealistic. Emilia, who wears a cross and passes for a Christian in order to get a job, then gets engaged to a Jewish man who loves her lack of annoying "Jewish" traits. Both her assimilated mother-in-law and her highly religious grandfather-in-law embrace her with fervor and affection, while insisting that she maintain various random aspects of Jewish observance (as a religious Jew, it was obvious to me that Nattel failed to research this aspect of the book; she should have had an Orthodox reader review it for inconsistencies and mistakes, of which there were many. I also found many of the Jewish characters highly stereotyped, like Vaudeville caricatures of what Jews act and sound like, complete with inverted sentences). Later, when the grandfather accidentally discovers Emilia's true origins, his reaction is one of -- anger. Anger? Wouldn't this devoutly religious man be joyful, or at least relieved, that his grandson had actually NOT married outside his faith? This was even inconsistent with the book itself -- when Emilia first entered the family, she was instructed to bend over backward so as not to offend him with her gentile ways. Additionally, when Emilia's husband requests that she convert to Judaism because they are expecting a baby, she resists the idea and is terrified to tell her husband that she already is Jewish, choosing instead to give him the impression that she dislikes Jews. Why would the latter be preferable to the former?

The symbolism and irony in this book are completely unsubtle and hit you over the head, and are part of what makes the plot so contrived. Nehama, a former prostitute, is anxious to hide that part of her life; Emilia, a Jew passing as a Christian, also engages in deception in order to make a favorable impression on those around her. I know, I know, I got it -- this is an ironic parallel. Nehama's adopted daughter (Emilia's by birth) assumes that it his her birth mother who was the prostitute (although she is not clear on what that entails) and even visits the cafe where her adoptive mother once propositioned men, performing a song for Nehama's former pimp, in search of her birth mother. While these plot twists may sound like perfect irony in theory, in practice they are executed in a way which renders the plot highly contrived and artificial. It's as if Nattel thought of these great ironies and then structured the plot so as to make them happen, as opposed to allowing the plot to develop and take a life of its own. In addition to the plot's artificiality, it was also incredibly slow and boring at times. Finally, a major cliffhanger of the story is left unresolved -- will Emilia seek out her daughter, and what will happen (between Emilia and her daughter; between Emilia and Nehama) if she finds her? Spoiler warning -- no.

Additionally, I found the ghosts in the book very annoying. Perhaps it's not fair for me to criticize this since I'm not a fan of magic realism in general; however, I've definitely seen it done better. Here, the ghosts appear in odd places and interact with various characters to no apparent end. They do not add interest to the story, and remind me of the intermittent scenes on the old television show "Sisters" where ghosts and alternate selves engage the characters in dialogue.

Basically, there is no reason to read this book. Neither the plot nor the characters were compelling, and its many flaws were not compensated for.

This is one of those works of historical fiction that creates a time and a place so vividly it feels like you fell into the book and are on the streets.

Truly unforgettable.This is a wonderful, sensitive, real portrayal of women. I am recommending it to my book group and friends. I would have given it 5 stars but I found the first 25 pages difficult to get through. Once past the beginning, I loved it.

I couldn't put this book down. I was riveted by the sights and smells and color of East End London in the late 19th century. Even more than that, as an adoptive mom, I could identify with Nehama's desire for children and her love and passion to protect her daughter, hers by adoption rather than birth. I was intrigued by the different possibilities for Nehama and Emilia, because of their background and education. As a working-class immigrant, Nehama's dream of a bookshop and a better life for her family were limited and yet she still is able to create a warm family life with her friends and community and to advocate on behalf of her neighbors. As a woman from a middle-class family, even though Emilia flees to London and lives for a while in poor circumstances, she is able to better her situation in ways that Nehama can only dream of. And yet the price she pays for doing so haunts her. As one reviewer (The Baltimore Sun) wrote: "From time to time, all too rarely, there comes a novel that so exceeds my expectations of mere excellence that I am tossed into the experience of magic."

Fresh off the heels of her dazzling literary debut, The River Midnight, Nattel returns with a novel focussing on the lives and characters of the Jewish quarter in fin-de-siecle London. The novel centres on the experiences of two emigres: Nehama, a teenaged Polish runaway who funds who voyage by stealing from her family; and Emilia, the youngest daughter of a well-to-do family from Minsk.

The novel is essentially split into three parts. In the first section of the book, the novel focuses on two central storylines: Nehama experiences a string of horrendous encounters that result in her becoming a prostitute shortly upon her landing in England; Emilia is at the centre of a dysfunctional family dynamic, where her cruel father sees in her all of the failings of her mother, and her progressively fading mother wilts under the authoritarian impulses of her husband. Emilia, single and pregnant, escapes to England. The two storylines ultimately converge when Nehama spies Emilia at the landing dock and rescues her from the same degrading fate that befell her. The story again diverges after Emilia gives birth to her baby and leaves her in Nehama's care.

Frankly, I didn't find that that the parts were well connected. For example, Nehama's past as a prostitute was very well written and probably the most emotionally wrenching portion of the novel; unfortunately, it has little, if any, material bearing on the rest of the text. Additionally, the action and suspense of the earlier portions of the novel fail to be maintained. The latter half of the novel is essentially a treatise on Judaism: how it can be defined, how it defines its practitioners, how it can be rectified with `modern' urban living, etc. While these are no doubt important questions to ask, they completely grind the plot to a halt.

Nattel is clearly a writer of great skill: her powerful imagery and deft use of soundscapes vividly portray the stink, heat, and filth of the Jewish quarter. She is equally capable of composing a gripping narrative (Emilia's experiences in Minsk and Nehama's days as a prostitute as mentioned above quickly come to mind). Regrettably, the novel is too uneven as Nattel tries to make the novel too many things.