The further a woman was from a position of privilege, the more daunting the struggle for education and access and the more opaque the necessary disguise. The purpose of historical fiction isn’t just to add a pleasing emotional embroidery to what we already know about history. And while the meticulously verified works of historians and journalists are essential to that goal, if we don’t set well-researched fiction by Louise Erdrich or Geraldine Brooks prominently by their side, we’ll miss one of the surest paths to repair. I read tomes about seventeenth-century philosophy and sanitation; I spent hour after hour in document-conservation labs and rare-manuscript rooms. The writer Hilary Mantel has said that the historical record is “what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it.” In every era, record keepers preserve the facts they consider important enough to note and safe enough to recount. Thanks to the labor of women of all backgrounds who have raised their voices in the face of indifference or opposition, some of the silences in our culture’s narratives are now getting long-overdue attention. To argue that something can’t have happened because it was forbidden is to ignore one of the basic rules of human nature: people try to do like the grass—they try to grow up through pavement. We’ve lost too many stories. Facts are essential, but when they’re absent or insufficient, the informed lie of fiction can be the only way to get at the overarching human truth. Yet while retrieving the facts of willfully forgotten lives is essential, some of the most necessary work of repair ultimately can be accomplished only by our culture’s most scrupulous liars: writers of historical fiction. The full story of a real Sethe will never appear in any historical record, but we have Toni Morrison’s Beloved; Annie Herron’s reality would not have been documented in her day, but in Alice Munro’s “A Wilderness Station,” we glimpse the harsh contours of her life in the nineteenth-century Canadian wilderness. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. I wanted to be able to answer with confidence: Yes, Ester is fictitious, but every piece of her story is factually plausible. Lives have run through the sieve, but we can catch them in our hands. Visit our store to buy archival issues of the magazine, prints, T-shirts, and accessories. The Weight of Ink. And if they were good at it—if they succeeded—we’ve never heard of them. REVIEWS: The Weight of Ink Kirkus Jewish Book Council Goodreads Book Companion WINNER OF A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD. It would be foolish to the point of hubris to believe we’ve already catalogued all those who masked their identities. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers of A. S. Byatt’s Possession and Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book. I took pains with accuracy not only because I didn’t want readers to be distracted by careless errors but also because I anticipated that when I published the book, readers might say, That’s an interesting story, but of course we know it couldn’t have happened—based on the evidence, very few seventeenth-century women succeeded in doing even a little bit of philosophical writing, and those who did were nobility and certainly not Jewish. Historical fiction, undertaken with integrity, is an act of repair. Sign up for the Paris Review newsletter and keep up with news, parties, readings, and more. It’s to tell the dangerous stories—the human truths that fly in the face of propriety or power. The lives that pass unnoticed through history’s sieve, in contrast, are the ones no one memorialized, often because the people involved were poor or female or “irrelevant” because of race or religion or sexuality, or because their stories were considered dangerous. Book Description Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. Her most recent novel, The Weight of Ink, won a 2017 National Jewish Book Award and will be released in paperback on May 1. An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers of A. S. Byatt’s Possession and Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book. This is a beautiful, complex, engrossing, and engaging novel that is more than worth the time it takes to read it. Rachel Kadish. In the camp, 16-year-old Cecilia "Cilka" Klein—one of the Jewish prisoners introduced in Tattooist—was forced to become the mistress of two … When history puts a foot on people’s necks, they break rules. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Kadish, Rachel. I undertook that research in order to write the story of a fictitious Portuguese Jewish woman, Ester Velasquez, who broke the rules of her time, who managed, through elaborate deception, to live a life of the mind forbidden to women of her era. Some, like Fanny Mendelssohn, composed music that was performed under the names of men. Some, like the Brontë sisters, wrote under fake identities. During the twelve years I spent writing The Weight of Ink, a novel set in the Jewish communities of seventeenth-century London and Amsterdam, I pursued historical research to sometimes absurd lengths. Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. Any history that doesn’t include women, and doesn’t make ample space for the lives of women of color, is itself fake news. We call that surviving.). You can find this review at Goodreads. Writing passages set in the seventeenth century, I chose my language carefully, checking Merriam-Webster’s “first known use” listings to confirm that the words I’d selected were common parlance in that era. The Weight of Ink Written by Rachel Kadish Review by Jennifer Bort Yacovissi In modern-day London, a cache of mid-17th-century papers is found, apparently untouched for three centuries, in … Find book reviews, essays, best-seller lists and news from The New York Times Book Review. The question, then, is how to correct our collective understanding of reality. winner of a national jewish book award. Most don’t succeed, but some do. The best part of "The Weight of Ink" is that it doesn't sacrifice readability or character development for the sake of the story, which takes place in both the 1990's and the 1660's. Rachel Kadish’s work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, Ploughshares, Salon, an d Tin House. What the historical record has rendered invisible will remain so unless we avail ourselves of the power to fictionalize, to blend the real and the imagined with rigor and transparency. Join the writers and staff of The Paris Review at our next event. This may sound like an endorsement of fake news, but in fact, it’s the opposite. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28 (592p) ISBN 978-0-544-86646-1 The information about The Weight of Ink shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. If a word wasn’t old enough (say, “chaperone”—first known use 1720), then I substituted a term my characters would have known (“duenna”—1623). The labor of filling the gaps is under way in venues large and small—only last month, the New York Times launched Overlooked, its series of obituaries for unsung women. In 1691, an unknown narrator in Richmond admits to having lied, and wishes to begin anew. This site was created in collaboration with Strick&Williams, Tierra Innovation, and the staff of The Paris Review. (My own mother’s family were law-abiding citizens in Poland until August 31, 1939. This is a beautiful, complex, engrossing, and engaging novel that is more than worth the time it takes to read it. Then they bribed, lied, sneaked across borders.
Unit Of Force In Physics, Verse-chorus-bridge Song Examples, Simone Callahan Partner 2018, How To Read Hertzsprung-russell Diagram, Nasa War Document 2001, How Old Is Norman Baker On The Wendy Show, Wildlife Conservation Jobs Salary, Automatic For The People, How Tall Is Sephiroth, Job Application Form Pdf, Example Changed The Way You Kiss Me, Marvel Vs Capcom Origins Rom, Toman Movie, Wcco Radio Breaking News, The Wonderful 101 Pc, Wned Weather, The Trip To Greece Episode 1 Watch Online, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Series 22 Episode 5, Proton Light Rocket, Ahsoka Tano Rebels Outfit, Rainbow Six Siege Deluxe Edition Ps4 Discount Code, No Man's Sky Forum, Lightsaber Sound Ringtone, Investigation Discovery Past Schedule, What Happened In Eve's Bayou, Which Sears Locations Are Closing, Brothers In Arms Mods, Is Randi Martin Married, Iced Earth - Enter The Realm,