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Performance
Overall
Excellent, Unforgettable, Best of the nest
Very good, thoroughly enjoyed,
Good, Solid, Enjoyed many aspects
STAR RATINGS GUIDE
Literal Literary Fiction Friction
THE BIRDICT
🧡 This is part-family-saga and part-theistic-rumination with just a soupcon of romance. It’s thoughtful literary fiction about family dysfunction, religious realism, and the legacy of the Holocaust. In other words, it’s a total one-off. The nearest comparison I have is She, Her & It which was a sci-fi retelling of the Golem story and that link is TENuous.
💚 Listen to this for its incredibly sharp observations on religion, the supernatural, and family dynamics. It’s also beautifully written, with compelling imagery.
💜 While enjoyable, this felt, to some extent, incomplete. So many fascinating threads were left dangling, without resolution. Almost certainly in the case of the supernatural elements, this was intentional. Leave the reader to make up their own mind. But I don’t feel like I got to the core of the characters.
Big thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an ALC in return for an honest review.
SQUAWKING THE TALK
🎧 This works as an audiobook. It just does. Genevieve Gaunt’s ethereal delivery lends the performance a dream-like quality, making for very easy listening and adding dimension to the story.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER: SIMILAR AUDIOBOOKS
No spoilers for this one. Maybe next time!
Click For Spoilers
Fervour
THE BLURB
Hannah and Eric are a successful couple living in North London with their three children and Eric's father, Yosef, a survivor of the camps. They are devout Jews who believe in the literal truth of the Old Testament, all except for their youngest son, Tovyah.
The death of Yosef fractures the family's apparent harmony and has a disastrous effect on Elsie, the model daughter, who disappears for four days, plunging her parents and siblings into a living nightmare. When she returns, just as mysteriously as she left, she is strangely altered.
Witnessing the complete transformation of their daughter's personality and some increasingly hard-to-explain events, Hannah and Eric begin to suspect Elsie is under the influence of black magic while Tovyah, a brilliant university student, believes his sister is suffering a mental collapse caused by his parents' antiquated beliefs.
But who is right? And can the family be reconciled before tearing itself apart?
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