The River Midnight [Paperback]

Like the mythical Polish shtetl of Blaszka in which it is set, The River Midnight is boisterous, tangled with secrets, and startlingly generous. Told more as nine interwoven stories, Lilian Nattel's debut novel portrays Jewish village life in the 19th century as both dense and wondrous, something akin to Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo--with similar touches of magic realism. The novel uses a roughly nine-month period in 1894 as its framework, each chapter recounting many of the same events through the eyes of successive characters. Along the way we encounter the pettiness, charity, gossip, and customs that sustain the village, making its cramped life both full and frustrating. At the center of this whirl is Misha, the midwife, whose own pregnancy is one of the book's abiding mysteries, and who, despite her inscrutability, elicits a resolute affection from her fellow villagers: the men who have loved or admired her, and the women she has befriended, provoked, and, ultimately, redeemed. "I have to hold the secrets of the whole village," Misha explains, and as we learn of her girlhood friendships and adult loves, the twined network of those secrets becomes increasingly apparent.

The novel's ambitious fragmentation, while it may occasionally lead us down the same stretch of road, is undeniably effective--revealing the bottomless texture of mingled lives. And while the story's magic realism is a bit intermittent and tangential, Nattel more than compensates with lush, scrupulous detail and an unerring eye for the tension between self-interest and benevolence. In The River Midnight, she has created a world where flesh and prayer, accident and magic, coincide. --Ben Guterson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Canadian author Nattel's debut novel poignantly and humorously evokes shtetl life by interweaving stories of four Jewish women in Blaszka, a turn-of-the-century Polish village. As vilda hayas (wild children), they romp in the woods. As adults, they bind their community together through their shared joys, sorrows, schemes and scandals. Married to the butcher and running his shop with wily efficiency, childless Hanna-Leah likes to bathe and dream in the Polnocna (Midnight) River. Restless Faygela has several children, the eldest in jail for helping her American cousin spread revolutionary ideas. After Zisa-Sara dies in America, her orphaned children are returned to her native village to be raised by friends. Looming over all is earth-goddess Misha, a strong, independent midwife who divorces her husband and refuses to remarry or reveal the father of her child. Blaszka plays host to Russians, Poles, Jews, non-Jews, players, peddlers, drifters and demons. As villagers travel, the reader also glimpses the streets of Plotsk, Paris, Warsaw and immigrant New York. Retelling each scene from different perspectives in fluid prose dotted with aphorisms and Yiddishisms, Nattel celebrates a culture that values scholarship, charity and individual freedom, its high-mindedness balanced by a coarse appreciation of human weakness. Details of food preparation, sexual attitudes, religious ritual and family routine produce a richly textured portrait of a small town. While her modest magic realism (evidently owing a debt to Singer and Aleichem) never soars, it beautifully captures a lost way of life and its enduring sense of community. Agent, Helen Heller. BOMC and QPB alternates; rights sold in Italy, Germany, Canada, U.K. and the Netherlands.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Polish Jewish life at the end of the 19th century in the fictional shtetl of Blaszka is the setting of this powerful debut novel, which balances magical elements with historical detail. Here, strong women ran the businesses, while the men are concerned with religious matters, the village council, the tavern, and the Polish authorities. Misha, the midwife, is a bigger-than-life earth mother who concocts herbal remedies for the village while safeguarding its secrets, including the name of the father of her unborn child. As a girl, she danced in the woods with her four friends, the vilda hayas, or wild creatures. The story of what happens to these girls as they become women is told first from the women's perspective, then from the men's, and finally from Misha's. Reminiscent of the work of I.B. Singer, this portrayal of a world that vanished with the Holocaust is filled with human tension and wonder. Highly recommended.
-?Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

A young Canadian writer's brilliant first novel skillfully evokes what Irving Howe called the World of Our Fathers and the genius of such literary forerunners and likely influences as Isaac Bashevis Singer. Nattel's complex story begins in the Polish village of Blaszka in the late 19th century, a decade or so following the Russian pogroms that cast lengthening shadows over the later lives of her charactersmost importantly, four women who grew up together as ``vilda hayas'' (wild children) and took varying paths to womanhood and fulfillment. Childless Hanna-Lea, wife of Hershel the butcher, haunts the village with the sorrowful fact of her barrenness. Faygela surrenders her dream of being a teacher to become instead the mother of five and, eventually, to see her daughter arrested for ``radical'' political acts. Zia-Sara emigrates to America with her husband and, dying there, leaves her children adrift between Blaszka and their strange new country. And village midwife Misha (who has ``more life in her than the whole of Russian Poland''), refusing to be bound by propriety or tradition, divorces her husband and later proudly, publicly gives birth on the very eve of Yom Kippur. Nattel weaves these stories together expertly in the richly detailed opening chapters (set variously in Blaszka, Warsaw, Paris, and New York City); then focuses just as intensely on the several men in her women's lives (the luckless water-carrier Hayim and morose Rabbi Berekh, whose attraction to the forthright Misha will change him forever, are among the most vividly drawn); and finally concentrates on Misha's volatile relationships with her closest friends (who submit to their traditional obligations in differing degrees), and on the wholesale changes wrought by the new century. A marvelous debut and a loving anatomy of the vanished world of the shtetls that merits comparison with the best work of Singer and Sholom Aleichem. (Book-of-the-Month Club/QPB alternate selection) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"Richly imagined, sensuous in its details [and] spiced with energetic dialogue, The River Midnight offers pleasures on every page." --The Globe and Mail

"Enchanting.— Dynamic women, feckless men.— Nattel writes with refreshing bawdiness [and] uses imagery to lush effect.— Vibrant— Engaging." --The New York Times

"To read this novel is to watch Nattel as she weaves a marvellous, meticulous fabric of family, friendship, myth, and memory." --Quill & Quire

"The novel's undeniable pleasure is due to Nattel's intricate evocation of a lost world and the sense of privileged intimacy she bestows on her readers." --Calgary Herald (3/27/99)

"Lilian Nattel's mesmerizing first novel...is not simply remarkable as a historical text. Nattel's flair for the telling detail is just one treasure in her bag of writer's tricks...painterly and precise." --Washington Post (3/23/99)

"Nattel's emotional, panoramic narrative proves extraordinary...vibrant, imaginative debut..." --Entertainment Weekly (2/15/99)

"... in her ambitious and highly pleasing first novel ... Nattel weaves a tapestry-like portrait of Blaszka ... Richly imagined, sensuous in its details, spiced with energetic dialogue, The River Midnight offers pleasures on every page." --The Globe and Mail (Feb.6/99)

"To read this novel is to watch Nattel as she weaves a marvellous, meticulous fabric of family, friendship, myth, and memory." --Quill & Quire

"Complex and multifaceted, The River Midnight investigates traditional gender roles and how sexual thraldom can become an incentive to change and revolution…its greatest power is in its historical detail." --Canadian Forum Magazine

Myth meets history in Blaszka, a fictional village in Poland and the site of this beautiful, multi-layered novel set in 1894. Listen. You can hear the excitement in the village square, the flimsy stalls piled high with wares, and in the centre Misha the midwife laughing. The wayward heart of Blaszka, she holds safe all the local secrets, including the stories of the four vilda hayas, "the wild creatures," as she and her girlfriends were known. Although the women have grown apart, unexpected love, a daughter imprisoned, and two orphan children sent home from America, entwine their lives again - all as Europe moves headlong towards chaos.

In this magnificent novel of magic and mystery, Lilian Nattel has resurrected a vanished world that explores the tensions between men and women, and celebrates the wordless bonds of friendship in a way that is simply unparalleled.

"Richly imagined, sensuous in its details [and] spiced with energetic dialogue, The River Midnight offers pleasures on every page." --The Globe and Mail

"Enchanting.— Dynamic women, feckless men.— Nattel writes with refreshing bawdiness [and] uses imagery to lush effect.— Vibrant— Engaging." --The New York Times

"To read this novel is to watch Nattel as she weaves a marvellous, meticulous fabric of family, friendship, myth, and memory." --Quill & Quire

"The novel's undeniable pleasure is due to Nattel's intricate evocation of a lost world and the sense of privileged intimacy she bestows on her readers." --Calgary Herald (3/27/99)

"Lilian Nattel's mesmerizing first novel...is not simply remarkable as a historical text. Nattel's flair for the telling detail is just one treasure in her bag of writer's tricks...painterly and precise." --Washington Post (3/23/99)

"Nattel's emotional, panoramic narrative proves extraordinary...vibrant, imaginative debut..." --Entertainment Weekly (2/15/99)

"... in her ambitious and highly pleasing first novel ... Nattel weaves a tapestry-like portrait of Blaszka ... Richly imagined, sensuous in its details, spiced with energetic dialogue, The River Midnight offers pleasures on every page." --The Globe and Mail (Feb.6/99)

"To read this novel is to watch Nattel as she weaves a marvellous, meticulous fabric of family, friendship, myth, and memory." --Quill & Quire

"Complex and multifaceted, The River Midnight investigates traditional gender roles and how sexual thraldom can become an incentive to change and revolution…its greatest power is in its historical detail." --Canadian Forum Magazine

Growing up in Montreal, Lilian Nattel soaked up the stories and customs of her Jewish culture and learned Yiddish from her parents: “My parents spoke Yiddish at home when they didn't want us kids to understand, so of course I learned it well.” The language has been useful while doing research for her novels, as she has been able to read prayers, poems and memoirs in the original. And for Nattel, adherence to historical fact is crucial to bringing her characters to life. As she explained in one interview, “I can’t bring myself to be inaccurate. If I’m writing about someone wearing a dress in 1895, I want to know the fashion in 1895, what colours were popular in 1895, I want to know the street names, what kind of people lived on that street, I want to know whether they have restaurants yet, how people cooked.”

For Nattel, writing has always been an integral part of who she is and being a full-time author has always been her goal, but it took years for her to write and publish her first book. It was while working as an accountant that she realized she would have to take a new approach and make some sacrifices in order for her dream to come true. Casting aside the preconceptions we all have about writers being driven only by their art, at the expense of everything else in life, Nattel came up with a solid plan that allowed her to explore taking on writing as a profession. “What I did was actually write up a contract with myself,” she has explained in one interview. “It was a five-year contract in which I contracted to give myself five years to see what I could do with writing because it meant a lot of financial sacrifices to have a part-time accounting practice.” In that five years she sold some stories to literary journals and began her first novel, so she signed herself up for another five years. And it was then that The River Midnight caught the attention of her agent, Helen Heller, and then an editor at Scribners in New York. The book was also signed by Knopf Canada and featured in their New Face of Fiction program.

The River Midnight was published in 1999 to international acclaim. Set in 1894, in the fictional village of Blaszka, Poland, the novel tells the magical and multi-layered story of four women who are brought closer together by unexpected love, an imprisoned daughter, and two orphan children sent home from America. One reviewer compared Nattel’s Blaszka, so full of “mythic significance,” to Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo and William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. The River Midnight won the Martin and Beatrice Fischer Award, and rights have been sold in seven countries so far. After its publication, Nattel was finally able to devote herself to writing full-time, though she still approaches her work with the discipline she needed early on: “Writing is a combination of effort and effortless, but there’s always a lot more effort. If you just wait for inspiration to strike, it’s never going to happen. You really have to put in the hours.”

After the success of The River Midnight, Nattel was determined to make sure that her second novel lived up to the expectations of her readers. So much so that she even tore up the third draft of what was to become The Singing Fire. Originally, the book was about a Victorian spinster, but the story just wasn’t coming together — all except for about thirty pages, which introduced a girl named Gittel. “I was attempting to write an easy novel,” Nattel has said, “and this other story was trying to push up from underneath.” Beginning again, Nattel created Emilia, and then Nehama, who would become the strongest voice in the finished book. As the story was gestating in Nattel’s mind, it was also strongly influenced by a major change in her own life: the adoption of two little girls. Her love for her new daughters inspired Nattel to explore what it meant to be a mother, and an adoptive mother, which became a major theme in The Singing Fire.

But for Nattel, having her fiction influenced by her own experiences is nothing new. In fact, it is her own life history that has always driven her to explore, and then to write. “I'm fascinated by history, seeing our present being shaped in the past. This has led me to explore the issues that are important to me, whether it is women’s friendship, motherhood, reconciliation or adoption in the historical times and places that have so much influenced who I am now.” Today, Nattel is hard at work on a third novel, set in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, which is narrated by an elderly Jewish woman recalling her youth.

Time grows short at the end of a century, like winter days when night falls too soon. In the dusk, angels and demons walk. Who knows who they are? Or which is which. But there they are, sneaking their gifts into the crevices of change. Even in a place like Blaszka, less than a dot on the map of Russian-occupied Poland.
Someone might say that so-and-so is an angel or so-and-so a demon. But make no mistake, it's just a question of style. One sympathizes, the other provokes. But their mission is the same, and so is their destination.
It's a cold day, the short Friday of winter, the 20th of Tevet 5654, or you might call it the 29th of December 1893, according to the Christian calendar. Everyone's in a rush, anxious to finish their business before the sun sets. Once darkness falls, the Sabbath rules. Candlelight will have no other purpose than its beauty, and women and men will make love in honor of the Sabbath.
Listen. You can hear the excitement in the village square. "Fresh, hot, only two kopecks." Girls run through the crowd, carrying baskets of rolls, pretzels, pierogies, and herring cut into small rings. The herrings almost speak. Take your pick, the large smelly ones, horse herring, pickled, smoked, or packed in fat. Steam rises from the warm baskets in the winter air. The square smells of vinegar, yeast, and horse dung. Men and women blow into their cold hands to warm them, pinching this and sniffing that, bargaining as if for their souls, undeterred by the crash of a stall that collapses under its mountain of earthenware. This is what keeps Blaszka together, the flimsy stalls piled high with everything, where people lean toward each other, bargaining, touching what they need, shaking it, holding it up to the light.
Hurry, the villagers say, the Sabbath is coming. Everything has to close early today. Am I asking about money? Do I worry about money? I know that you, lady, will give it to me later, that you will pay. Look at this, straight from Plotsk, the best quality. A pity it should lie here, unused. Let me put it into your basket for you. Just a few kopecks. It costs less than air.
Fifty Jewish families and six Polish tenant farmers live in the village. But on market day, every Tuesday and Friday, dozens of Christian peasants, who farm the land along the Pólnocna River, come down to Blaszka. In the village square they bargain and in Perlmutter's tavern, they drink vodka with beer and eat cheese and pickles and hard-boiled eggs.
A Jew can never be a peasant, even if he looks and acts like one, nor a gentleman either. Such categories apply only to Christians in Poland, each of them having a place on the land. But by law the Jews are townspeople. Even if they are farmers, they are townspeople borrowing the land; they have no right to it. Within their towns the Jews can make their own distinctions, so long as they service the people of the land. So in Blaszka, Jews buy the peasants' produce and sell goods from Plotsk. Jews are tinsmiths and blacksmiths and cobblers and tailors and wheelwrights and barrelmakers and butchers and bakers. They speak Yiddish and Polish and a smattering of Russian, on weekdays they bargain and on the Sabbath they rest.
The village square isn't paved. It's marked in one corner by the bridge, in another corner by the tavern, by the synagogue in the third corner, and where the square dips down toward the Pólnocna River, by the house of Misha the midwife. Her house stands on stilts so that the spring floods flow under it, bringing a rich mud that makes the vegetables in her garden grow larger than anywhere else. If you stood on the doorstep of Misha's house, you could see the entire village, the river curling around it, the woods behind the river, the lanes leading out of the village square, the small houses, each with an eating room in front and sleeping rooms behind separated by a halfway where the hens roost in the winter. Across the river, in the new part of Blaszka, you could see the ruins of the mill and the woods overgrowing abandoned houses.
There is a legend about the Pólnonca River. It's said that a saint was martyred in the river's waters at midnight, resulting in the conversion and baptism of the local tribe. Pólnoc in Polish means midnight, and so the river was named. But others argue that pólnoc also means north, the Pólnonca so named because it enters the Vistula River from the north.
The Pólnonca is frozen now, children sliding on its surface. In front of her house, Misha stands beside her stall, her hands on her hips. She's bigger than any man in Blaszka. Her table is crowded with jars and bottles, powders and ointments and liquids for women's troubles, and men's, too. "There's nothing to be afraid of," she says.
All right, the women say, but you'd better watch your behind or the Evil One will send someone to kick it while you're not paying attention.
"Well, let him just try to make some business with me." Misha holds out her hand, beckoning the invisible stranger. She grins, her gold tooth flashing in the thin winter light. "Don't worry," Misha says, "if someone comes from the other side, he'll soon be running out of Blaszka with his tail between his legs. You can be sure of it."

In a small house off the village square, an old woman is teaching the little girls their letters. Tell us about Misha, they beg. We want to hear the story about Misha and Manya again. Please, please. The old woman puts down her pencil. "Well, I knew Misha's mother very well. She was so happy when she had a daughter, but she had one fear. Do you know what that was?" The children shake their heads. "That her daughter would turn out like Manya. You've heard of Manya, haven't you?" Yes, yes, the little girls say, Manya the witch comes in the night to steal away wicked children. "But you're not wicked children, are you?" The girls shake their heads, no, no, no. "Now, listen carefully, children. Before Misha, there was Blema, her mother. Before Blema was Miriam, Misha's grandmother. And before Miriam was?" Who? the children ask. "Manya!" The old woman leans forward, wriggling her clawed fingers at the children until they squeal. "Oh, Manya was bigger than any man, and no one could tame her until they put her to death for casting spells. Blema was afraid that her baby should turn out like Manya, God forbid. So Blema named her baby Miriam after her own mother, who was a good woman. Modest and quiet. Like you girls, yes? But you can't cheat fate, children.
"Blema carried her baby in a shawl on her back when she went to the peasants' cottages. The peasants liked to play with the little one. They called her Marisha, you know that's Polish for Miriam. But the baby couldn't say Marisha or even Miriam. What came out was Misha. The peasants said it must be her true name, and that, since misha means bear in Polish, the girl would grow up to be as dangerous as a mother bear. And because Misha is a man's name among the Russians, she would also be as fierce as a Cossack. This is what came to be. I'm sure you heard your mothers say so. When a woman is in childbirth, even the Angel of Death is afraid of Misha."
In the village square, the watercarrier rushes by Misha's stall, his buckets swinging wildly on their yoke. As his foot knocks against a stone, he stumbles, holding onto her table for balance. And then he's gone toward the bridge.
Across the bridge is what used to be the wealthy part of Blaszka. There among the ruins of abandoned houses, you can see the village well and beside it the bathhouse with its marble columns, built with the miller's money, may he rest in peace. Beside it is the foundation of the new synagogue, never finished.
Inside the bathhouse, the old men sit naked on the benches, sweating in the steam that rises as the attendant pours water over the hot stones. At the end of the room is the sunken bath, the mikva, with its purifying water. Before the men leave, they'll dip in the mikva to make themselves ready for the Sabbath.
Why does the butcher get to sit in the second row of the synagogue so close to the Holy Ark? they complain. He's just a proster, a plain person, like us. A man should know his place. The proster do the work, the baalebatim make the money, and the shayner tell you what to do, either because they're rich enough or they're scholars.
Sure, that's how it is in most places, but you can't expect it here in Blaszka. Who would sit in the second row if not the butcher? In the days before the Russians blew up the mill, we had shayner in Blaszka. Fine people. But now? There's just proster. Anybody who was anybody left Blaszka. And why not? You can walk for two hours down the road and you're in Plotsk. The capital of the gubernia. Twenty-six thousand people. A theater. A Jewish hospital. Schools. Everything.
Tell me, what's a town when there's no fine people driving around in their carriages and telling you what's what? That's the kind of village Blaszka is. We have a rabbi whose greatest friends are unbelievers — I saw him get a letter from France myself — and he can't stand the sight of a lit match, either.
Never mind. It's good to be alive. A little schnapps, a little singing, something nice to eat on Shabbas, it's all right. I'm old, but I'm in no rush to leave. Tell me, if it's so good there in the next world, why doesn't anyone come back to tell us about it?
Outside the bathhouse, a lane leads to the bridge and across the bridge, the road from Blaszka leaves the village square, following the Pólnocna River down to the Vistula where it meets the highway that runs from Plotsk to Warsaw. Here, at the juncture of the Vistula and the Pólnocna Rivers, there is a shiny black carriage with THE GOLEM PLAYERS painted in yellow on the side. The horse snorts, flicking her tail, braided with a yellow ribbon. Crystals of breath have formed around her mouth, and the creatur...