Top positive review
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5.0 out of 5 starsProfound, fascinating and deeply engaging, but not "light reading"
ByTrudie Barrerason May 27, 2017
“The Weight of Ink” by Rachel Kadish lives up to its title in many ways. At 560 tightly-written pages of magnificent prose, this novel can under no circumstances be called “light reading”. Indeed, the only reason I was able to complete it despite the protest of my arthritic hands and aging eyes was because it is unquestionably absolutely enthralling to a person with my specific interests.
Those interests include theology and the incredible injustices which dogma-driven society has perpetrated against women, homosexuals, Jews, and others. This book touches on all these aspects, and many more. As the plot summary indicates, Helen Watt, an aging British historian and expert in Jewish studies, is invited by a former student to assist in the evaluation of some manuscripts found during the renovation of a house in a London suburb. Helen, suffering from Parkinson Disease, needs help in studying what she realizes is a treasure-trove of documents, and calls upon a colleague to recommend a post-graduate student to assist. Enter Aaron Levy, a young American secular Jew who has run into a roadblock on his own research attempting to find a “Jewish Connection” in the writings Shakespeare. Helen and Aaron find their collaboration both uneasy and deeply rewarding.
Further dramatic tension is provided by the fact that Helen’s ploy of having the college (from which she is about to retire) acquire the documents for conservation and archiving immediately raises the specter of academic competitiveness. It soon becomes obvious that the papers include the writing of Ester Velasquez, the ward of the blind Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes, a Portuguese Jew. Having fled Portugal for the relative safety of Amsterdam after the Inquisition killed his parents and blinded him, Rabbi Mendes has been sent to London to try to assist the struggling Jewish community there. The existence of a female scribe writing in 17th Century London just before plague and then fire decimated the city is remarkable enough. However, as Helen and Aaron continue to delve into Ester’s writings an incredible back-story emerges. This woman was not only a scribe, but a philosopher as well, determined to connect with some of the great – and, in the opinion of most other people of that era heretical – thinkers of her time. As the story weaves back and forth between Ester’s traumas and those of Helen and Aaron as they seek to discover the reality of who this woman was and what she really represented (before being “scooped” by other investigators), great depth and richness of thought evolves.
As mentioned in my opening comments, this is not a book I could recommend to someone seeking light or trivial reading. However, it is profound, fascinating and deeply engaging for anyone who is concerned with the fundamental issues Rachel Kadish so brilliantly addresses through the words and thoughts of her extraordinary characters.
