Safekeeping

by Jessamyn Hope

[clementine]

Okay. Let me start with what I liked about this book. The kibbutz setting was original and described richly. I enjoyed the focus on aspects of secular Jewish life which show a shared, meaningful culture and tradition even without religion. There were moments of true insight peppered throughout. There was an unexpected bit of Canadian history which I enjoyed. Unlike other reviewers, I didn't mind the end and actually thought it was fitting and realistic. (Sometimes things just suck and are sad for no reason, sometimes people die without closure, sometimes people do terrible things and their attempts to make things right fail.) There are some interesting ideas nestled in this novel, particularly about mediating painful pasts and confronting the fact that sometimes there is no such thing as atonement or closure.

That said, clearly from my rating there was more that I didn't enjoy. Let me start with the premise: someone who has done wrong setting off on a journey to return a priceless object to its supposed rightful owner in order to find some sort of penance. I just find the premise a little overdone and banal, though it is subverted somewhat. I wasn't a huge fan of the framing of the narrative and flashbacks, either: characters were just constantly lapsing into detailed reveries. This integrates the flashbacks into the text, but I found it more jarring to constantly move between past and present than if the flashbacks had been a little more separated. As usual with multi-character narratives, some were a lot more interesting than others. I didn't particularly like how the perspective could change from paragraph to paragraph, either. It felt messy.

In general I object to the politics of this novel. I mean, where do I even start? First, Adam's addiction isn't explored in any depth and is basically used to bolster the idea that he's a bad person. (I mean, I guess he's supposed to be kind of sympathetic, but he's also a misogynist and generally just terrible.) The treatment of Claudette's OCD didn't ring true, either: she managed to just break free of it even after going off her medication because she had some sort of spiritual revelation. Ulya is a really horrible character, and I don't just mean because she's a bad person. Yes, she is mean, selfish, greedy, and a criminal - and I find the fact that she's also overtly sexual a lazy misogynistic stereotype clearly tying lack of morals with female sexuality. (Oh, and punishing her with a pregnancy is just icing on the cake.) Ziva's socialism and feminism are written as aggressive and militant: because she believes in progressive values, she isolates herself... even though she's kind of right. And the position on Israel is just... not something I can get behind. This is a fraught topic, but the positioning of anyone who questions Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and refusal to consider the Palestinian perspective is just really off. A lot of characters espouse racist viewpoints against Palestinians which the narrative doesn't challenge at all.

Basically, I had a lot of technical and political issues with this novel, which is too bad, because the blurb made it sound like it had a lot of potential.