Jewish Book Fair
Debutantes
Meet Nomi Eve and Kate Wenner, two first-time
novelists whose works of fiction have set the literary world talking.
r
SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Special to the Jewish News
"In some ways
I've grafted
my own
stories onto
my father's
stories."
— Nomi Eve
e beginning is in the trees,"
e narrator relates in the pro-
logue of Nomi Eve's debut
novel, The Family Orchard, a
multigenerational set of family tales,
spanning almost 200 years, mostly rooted
in a citrus orchard in Israel. The trees also
refer to the meticulous genealogical
records kept by the narrator's father,
whose family trees are reproduced
throughout the book.
The novel is told in three voices, with a
talmudic-like format. Brief sections
drawn from the narrator's father's diaries,
tided "My Father Writes," serve as a kind
of text, providing an overview of Israel's
history, from 19th-century Turkish rule to
the present.
The narrator comments, elaborates and
embellishes them with stories told in the
third person in sections "I Write," and a
fictional Nomi Eve comments in "I Tell"
sections. Although it's complicated to
explain, the narrative flows gracefully,
revealing stories of love, loss, nationhood,
tragedy, war, family secrets and, always,
trees.
Nomi Eve the author arrives at our
interview with her husband and new
baby, and soon we are joined by her
mother. "It's a family book," Eve, who
took her middle name as her last name in
her early 20s, says, laughing as she does
often.
This is one of those publishing fairy
tales. Eve, now 32, began the novel soon
after completing a master's program in
writing at Brown.
When she finished, she sent the manu-
script to an agent who promptly agreed
to take it on and within weeks sold it to
an admiring editor at Knopf. The novel
was published last month with a first
printing of 100,000 copies, unusually
high for a first novel, and a "very grateful"
Eve is on a 25-city publicity tour —
accompanied by her husband and baby.
The Family Orchard also is a novel
about storytelling, how a family's stories
are transmitted. The first of a long line of
complex, richly drawn characters to be
introduced are Yochanan, born in Prussia,
and Esther, daughter of the chief rabbi of
,
Sandee Brawarsky is a New York-based
book critic.
11/3
2000
84
the British empire, who move to
Jerusalem in an arranged marriage in
1837. Their son Eliezer marries a half-sis-
ter, and their daughter turns a talent for
thievery into a skill at putting words
together when she marries a Russian
immigrant. They move to a settlement
near Petach Tikvah, which becomes the
site of the family orchard.
There are wonderful scenes of an aging
Eliezer running along the walls of Jerusalem
with his twin grandsons, one of whom is
the narrator's grandfather. In this family are
tales of love affairs, a murder, a handi-
capped child who is sent away from the
orchard but has a ghostlike presence there.
Eve writes beautifully of dreams, souls,
a golem, and also about earthly things
like grafting, which the pardesanim,
orchard men, of the family are particular-
ly skilled at.
One of the things that make Eve's novel
stand out is the vibrancy of her narrative.
She writes with an original, sensuous
quality, with much attention to details
both visual and imagined.
When asked about her visual percep-
tions, she explains that she's attentive to all
of the senses in her writing, that she sees
things in her imagination in a "really dra-
matic way," but that, interestingly, there's
an "essential disconnect" in her life.
She says that her husband often laughs
when she doesn't notice things right in
front of her in everyday life.
She explains that she writes and re-writes,
cutting descriptions, and that she often
has to write 100 pages to get a single page.
Eve's father, a finance professor, has
traced their family's history back to the
14th century, connecting to Rashi and
the Maharal of Prague. When she was a
teenager in suburban Philadelphia, she
found his work boring, but when she was
older realized it offered an entry point for
writing about her family.
She grew up spending summers in
Israel, visiting her grandparents' orchard,
and has great love for the land.
Frequently asked how much of the novel
is based on her father's research, and how
much is made up, she says that some of
the stories are true, that 75 percent of the
"My Father Writes" sections are based on
his actual notebooks. About the other
voices, she enjoys being evasive.
"I believe that fiction is formed truth. I
believe that history is a way of knowing
all of this. I believe that legend is how we
read between the lines," she writes.
She talks about writing as a physical
experience. In Israel she visited the fields
and houses she writes about and sat in her
grandmother's kitchen listening to stories,
and "the words sunk deep into my skin."
To learn about grafting, she spent time
with her father in the orchard, "running
from tree to tree, ducking low under
branches."
"In some ways," she explains, "I've
grafted my own stories onto my father's
stories."
In the novel, Shimon explains to his
sons that grafting is something unnatural,
but it is "as if it were asked of us. Part of
our partnership in creation." Just as graft-
ing makes the trees more beautiful and
stronger, she believes that the combined
voices of the father and daughter tell a
story "more bountiful than if one of those
voices were standing alone."
The famous doubletree in the novel,
half blood orange and half mandarin,
represents for Eve the grafting of the
painful and the sweet — "so much of
what life is about."
The Family Orchard, which includes a
manual of orchard terms at the end, is
illustrated with engravings of the land-
scape and of people from 19th-century
travelogues written by Christian mission-
aries to the Holy Land.
Eve felt strongly that the book should
be beautiful to look at, and it is. Having
traveled to Israel and returned, as the
early authors did with many observations,
she feels a kinship with them. "My book
is in some way in dialogue with those
travelogues," she says.
Many writers already have their next
few books in mind while they're working.
Eve, who lives in Brookline, Mass., is cer-
tain that she'll write other books, but
believes in taking long breaks, "waiting
until you have something to say again."
When she starts writing again, she'll
probably write more family stories, more
stories about people in love, more stories
about people profoundly affected by his-
tory, more stories about people who think
a lot about God."
"
Nomi Eve speaks 1 p.m. Monday,
Nov. 6, at the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield, and at
8 p.m. at the Oak Park JCC.