House on Endless Waters

Starred review from November 1, 2019
A celebrated Israeli novelist's visit to Amsterdam, the city where he was born, triggers the search for his origins that--unknowingly--he has been waiting to make his entire life. Paying thoughtful homage to the Jews of Amsterdam, trapped in the Nazis' inexorable vise of persecution, Israeli writer Elon (If You Awaken Love, 2007, etc.) has composed a story of love, loss, and yearning, expressed through the creation of a novel within a novel. Her central character, writer Yoel Blum, was instructed by his mother never to visit the city from which she, Yoel, and his sister fled, but after her death he makes the trip and accidentally sees a clip of prewar film that opens up questions of identity he feels compelled to explore. So Yoel settles in Amsterdam, in a tacky hotel right near the hospital where he was born, and begins to accumulate notes for a novel through which he will try to make sense of the past. This second story features Sonia, a mother, and her two children, Nettie and Leo, characters who both animate Yoel's knowledge of the past and accompany him into the present as he wanders the streets, accumulating information, acquaintances, and atmosphere, while slowly coming to terms with the truth. Heavily shadowed with the creeping horrors of the Holocaust--in particular the heart-wrenching choice to hide children and the consequences of that choice--the novel is given weight by its focus on Yoel's psychology and the mood of a beautiful capital flowing with symbolic dark water. Lyrically phrased and often powerfully visual, the novel has a slow pace, unlike other, perhaps more conventional war stories. However, this deeply felt tale offers a rewarding meditation on survival and on digesting the emotional burdens freely or unknowingly carried. Blurring the edges between history and fiction, this achingly mournful work impresses with its grave empathy.

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December 15, 2019
Yoel Blum, a well-known, respected, popular Israeli author, visits Amsterdam to meet with his Dutch publisher. He does this reluctantly because he promised his late mother that he would never visit the city of their origin. Once there, he tours the city's Jewish Museum with his wife and sees a film clip about Jewish life in prewar Amsterdam. He recognizes his mother and his sister in the film, but there is also an unidentified infant. Intrigued by what he has seen, Yoel begins a search for his family history, checking into an inexpensive hotel near the old Jewish quarter and pouring over local archives. He visits museums and synagogues and walks all over the city in his quest to discover what happened to his family. Readers will find Elon's lyrical prose haunting as she moves between past and present, constructing a heartbreaking, moving tale that brings understanding and acceptance. This beautiful novel is an excellent choice for book groups interested in both literary and historical fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)