Sépharade by Eliette Abécassis (review)

un penseur et un pédagogue qui nous fait découvrir les tourments actuels de cette âme africaine en question. John Carroll University (OH) Hélène N. Sanko Creative Works edited by Nathalie Degroult ABÉCASSIS, ELIETTE. Sépharade. Paris: Albin Michel, 2009. ISBN 978-2-226-19223-3. Pp. 456. 22 a. An accomplished novelist (and an agrégée de philosophie), Eliette Abécassis is best known for her trilogy that combines a metaphysical quest with high adventure : Qumran (1996), Le Trésor du temple (2001), and La Dernière Tribu (2004). Born in Strasbourg to a Sephardi—more specifically, Moroccan—Jewish family, Abécassis has turned her ongoing research on her heritage and identity into a vast historical saga (vast enough to require a family tree at the end of the novel). The narrative of Sépharade is built around a wedding. Esther Vital, who through her family history resembles the author, is about to marry Charles Toledano in Tel Aviv. For the ceremony that will unite two large Jewish Moroccan families, far-flung relatives and friends from France and Canada have gathered, bringing new stories and reviving old rivalries. Esther is portrayed as a halfhearted Sephardi, attracted to the ancient cultural traditions preserved by Moroccan Jews who have reluctantly resettled abroad, but also more comfortable in the French modernity in which she grew up. The tension between her vibrant but stifling family environment and her longing for an autonomous life is reflected in the city where she grew up, a city in which the relatively recent Sephardi community has come to outnumber its older Ashkenazi counterpart: “A Strasbourg, donc, il y avait deux communautés bien distinctes. Les ashkénazes, réservés, peu expansifs, précis, rigoureux, et les sépharades ” (24). Needless to say, Moroccan Jews embody in this novel the opposite of these cultural traits. The author devotes many pages to descriptions of the food, clothing, language (the now-disappearing Judeo-Arabic dialects of Morocco), family customs, and religious practices of her community. Some of her alternately affectionate and ironic descriptions of traditional family life recall the conventional “Jewish mother” jokes that are well known in the United States. Comic relief is also present in the ways in which Abécassis depicts the petty antagonisms and expressions of snobbery that persist between Jewish families from different Moroccan cities (or between Jews from Morocco and Tunisia). Abécassis links the nostalgia fondly expressed by her characters for Jewish life in Morocco (tempered by realistic accounts of periodic massacres) to the centuriesold civilization that flourished in Spain until the expulsion of all Jews in 1492. It is through these and other historical links that her narrative acquires an almost mythic dimension, linking widely divergent cultures (embodied, not without internal conflicts, by Esther) that initially seem to be radically separated by history and geography. At a stylistic level, there is something in the author’s lyricism, at once erotic and fervently religious—“O murmures de la fiancée au fiancé” (132)—that recalls the tone of Albert Cohen’s novels, which were also permeated Reviews 843 with longing for a distant, lost Jewish community. As the preparations for Esther’s wedding day progress, more family history is revealed, much of it darkly romantic and linked to an anachronistic belief in ancient magical arts. Each of the numerous characters also provides opportunities for broader historical considerations . Narrative continuity is provided by the Sephardi “secret” repeatedly alluded to, which is finally revealed to the main character toward the end of the novel, and which will transform her life. Unfortunately, by constantly breaking up her vivid storytelling in order to delve into lengthy historical and philosophical issues, Abécassis ends up wearying her reader through an accumulation of digressions . Tighter editing would have benefited a novel that starts out as very well written but eventually comes to seem overly long. Western Washington University Edward Ousselin BALDWIN-BENEICH, DENIS. Le Sérieux des nuages. Paris: Actes Sud, 2010. ISBN 978-27427 -8817-0. Pp. 264. 20 a. Denis Baldwin-Beneich, co-author of a 1984 bestseller, Softwar, has since published six novels on his own, the most recent being...