Tamar Yellin's The Genizah at the House of Shepher

Below find a short piece I wrote for the Tallahassee Democrat awhile back on Tamar Yellin's first novel. It was in honor of her doing a reading at Ann's synagogue. At the time, the hardcover was out from Toby Press and had gotten good reviews from the library journals. Since then, the book has won a $100,000 literary prize, was bought for an absurd amount of money in Germany, and been a finalist for other prizes. It was published in trade paperback by St. Martin's this summer while Ann and I were in Europe, which is why I forgot to blog about it at the time.It truly is a remarkable novel, and I have fond memories of it, too, because of a writer's group called Storyville. Storyville included myself, Tamar, Liz Williams, Keith Brooke, Mark Roberts, Lawrence Dyer, Neil Williamson, Des Lewis, Eric Schaller, and many others. Some of us managed to get together in Robin Hood's Bay in England for a weekend of reading and fun, back in late 2001. It was a magical time. I remember so many readings, including Liz reading from her latest novel and Tamar from hers--at the time unpublished. I read from "The Cage" from City of Saints & Madmen (which I was still working on, both content and layout for the Prime edition). I still think about that weekend, and think about the fact that so many of us in that group have had books and projects come out since.***It’s been a long road from idea to completion for British author Tamar Yellin's critically acclaimed novel The Genizah at the House of Shepher. The journey has taken Yellin more than 14 years and involved travel from Canada to England to Jerusalem and back again. Now Yellin's journey brings her to Tallahassee’s Congregation Shomrei Torah for a reading in support of Genizah, just published this month by Toby Press.Yellin describes the novel as "not only a thriller, but an interrogation of Jewish identity, a meditation on exile and belonging, and, along the way, a love story."In the novel, the discovery of a long-lost holy book leads to conflict in the present-day and a quest for family in which the narrator unearths the story of her great-grandfather, her grandfather, and the tormented love affair of her parents.The combination of the personal and the universal has brought The Genizah at the House of Shepher excellent reviews. It has been called a "fascinating, labyrinthine journey" (Kirkus Reviews), "impossible to put down" (Booklist, starred review), and a "stunning book…with inexhaustible richness" (Bookpage).A prize-winning Bible student, Yellin was inspired to write the novel when a vast cache of family documents was discovered in the attic of her grandparents’ home in Jerusalem.“It was an incredible sight,” she says. “Even the dust on the floorboards was composed of disintegrating paper.”Among other documents, they found an important Hebrew bible, containing notes on the text of the Aleppo Codex, regarded by scholars as the most perfect text of the Bible in existence. The Codex had been destroyed by fire in 1947, and the notes were the only surviving evidence of its text. The notes, which had been missing for more than 70 years, were eventually used to reconstruct the vanished Codex."I've always been fascinated by the evolution of the biblical text," Yellin says, "by the idea of there being different versions. I wanted to use that theme not only for its mysterious aspect, but as a metaphor for history--for the stories and anecdotes that get passed down through the generations."To that end, the novel juxtaposes the discovery of an ancient Codex with the story of the narrator's family journey, ending in Jerusalem and the house in which the Codex is later found.Much to Yellin's pleasure, her family has embraced the novel."I've been especially touched by my sisters' reaction," Yellin says. "Because we lost our parents when we were young, I wrote the book partly in their memory, and also to preserve in some way the family house in Jerusalem, which was demolished in 1987. My aunt, who grew up there, wrote me an eight-page letter describing her feelings about the novel, which made me cry--happy tears."Yellin's family has always been deeply connected to the Jewish experience."I learned Hebrew on my father's knee," Yellin says. "Some of my strongest childhood memories are of sitting in class chanting the Bible aloud, Hebrew and English."That experience influenced the way Yellin wrote the novel."The rhythm of the language entered my head and even though I write in English, I'm conscious that Genizah has a biblical Hebrew cadence,” Yellin says.The novel deviates from the real-life events in its fictional story. For example, in the novel, an actual Codex is discovered in the attic. The mysterious figure of Gideon, who seeks the Codex, is also a fictional creation. However, the novel is also deeply autobiographical."The outlines of the Shepher family history [in the novel] are, broadly speaking, my own. Like the character in the novel, my great-grandfather left Lithuania in the mid-nineteenth century to live in Jerusalem. A forebear of mine also really did go off to look for the ten lost tribes. Although in real life, my grandfather passed it off as a comic episode--apparently, the guy got as far as Damascus, fell ill, and decided to go home."In part because of the personal family element to her novel, Yellin dismisses some reviewers’ comparisons to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code."Depending on their point of view, readers have responded to different elements," Yellin says. "I was pleased that the Bookpage reviewer picked up on Shulamit's being 'acutely conscious of her own puzzling moment in history.' I think that in terms of Jewish identity, of the Jewish journey, this is a very puzzling moment in history. That's what I was really writing about."Much of the story hangs on an idea expressed in one particular passage in the novel: "The line of tension between choice and chance is the thread by which the miracle of existence hangs."After such a long path to completion and publication, Yellin has been "relieved and delighted" by the critical response--and the enthusiasm from readers."I try as a writer to touch on the universal through the specific. Everybody has a 'genizah' – a personal history – and people have responded to that."