(Bought at the Strand Bookstore for $8): The was the first volume assigned for my new book club. I found it at the Strand and said to myself, "This thing is over 500 pages! How am I gonna finish it in time for the first class?" Luckily I had a couple of weeks and was able to get through it. A fascinating, complex story on two time tracks. In 2000, scholar and historian Helen Watt discovers a trove of documents from a 17th century rabbi in a London suburban house. She clashes was brash Jewish-American grad student Aaron who has issues of his own. Helen is not Jewish, but flashes back to her time working in the new state of Israel. But that's not the second timeline. We also trip back to the 1660s and the story of Esther, the blind rabbi's scribe. Rachel Kadish explores women's roles, religion, love, philosophy, Jewish history in an absorbing novel. The ending wherein everything is resolved and explained is a bit too tidy for me.
It reminded me of Possession which employed a similar format with two modern scholars unearthing the correspondence of two Victorian poets.
