Fervour
By Toby Lloyd
Fiction/Sceptre/Paperback/309 pages/$35/Amazon SG (amzn.to/3wVDT78)
3 stars
This atmospheric debut novel, a slow-burn family saga that deals with weighty issues such as religion and teenage rebellion, is not the breeziest of reads.
The dysfunctional family in question are the Rosenthals who, the book jacket screams, are “not like other families”.
The parents are religious Jewish zealots – Eric, an unerringly devout barrister, and Hannah, an exploitative journalist – whose traditions, mythicism and beliefs shape the formative years of their three children Gideon, Elsie and Tovyah, whom readers meet in their adolescent years.
Casting a pall over the family is grandfather Yosef, who dies of old age in the early pages.
But he is an all-knowing presence throughout the book, a World War II and Holocaust survivor with secrets of his own as a Sonderkommando. The term refers to a Jewish prisoner who was forced to collaborate with the Nazis or be killed.
All this becomes fodder for Hannah, a self-proclaimed “memoirist” who releases a sensationalist title that shoots straight to the top of bestseller lists.
Golden child Elsie, however, who was close to Yosef, takes it differently. She runs away from home after his death and returns a shell of her former self, seemingly obsessed with “ancient techniques for communing with the dead” and drawn into the labyrinth of Jewish folklore.
Elsie, who is by far the most interesting character, is soon suspected of being a witch, with her parents ignoring more earthly explanations.
Yet the narrative meanders and is told through the eyes of the intelligent but insufferable Tovyah, a reclusive history undergraduate at Oxford University, as well as his dormitory neighbour Kate. Cue detour to issues such as youth angst, fitting in and sexual tension.
Curiously, Fervour is marketed as a horror story although scares – both jump-scares and implicit, atmospheric ones – are at best ghastly apparitions.
What is a lot more unnerving under the pen of atheist author Toby Lloyd, who has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University, are the horrors of war, ethnic and religious discrimination, vices like substance abuse, as well as the rabbit hole of hysteria and neglect.
Fervour pre-supposes the reader has a fair amount of knowledge about Judaism, with lengthy discourses about the Old Testament and sacred Jewish myths. One character says: “We have arrived at a paradox. To live as a Jew is impossible, and not to live as a Jew is equally impossible.”
A novel about Judaism will inevitably involve anti-Semitism (the hostility and prejudice against Jews) and anti-Zionism (the opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, and by extension, modern-day Israel).
As a matter of course, it broaches the Israeli-Palestine conflict, making it uncomfortable reading given contemporary events.
If you like this, read: We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter (Allison & Busby, 2017, $12.74, Amazon SG, go to amzn.to/4agOKqH). It is based on a true story about the Kurcs, a three-generation Polish and Jewish family who try to reunite after they were torn apart during World War II. The novel has been adapted for the small screen, and will be released in the United States by Hulu on March 28 and subsequently on Disney+ in other regions.
