Reviewed By Toni Whitmont, Booktopia Buzz Editor
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The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman:
The Hebrew month of Elul - the last month of the year - is ushered in with the sound of the shofar (the ram's horn). This primal ancient call is supposed to wake the spirit to repentance and renewal. It is also a month of granting and asking for forgiveness. It is the month to search one's heart and come close to God in preparation for the coming days of judgement.
Alice Hoffman has chosen the calendar settings wisely for her upcoming novel
The Dovekeepers, which is a remarkable re-telling of the Masada story. Set between 70 CE and 73 CE, the story tracks the rhythm of the weeks, the months, the seasons in the period from the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem to the mass martyrdom of 900 Jews in their desert fortress the night before the invaders breeched the walls to discover they had achieved a completely empty victory. The Israelites had already determined their own day of judgement.
Masada has a place in Jewish history not unlike Gallipoli does in Australian. It is a site of a magnificently pointless clash of civilisations, a loss of epic proportions, a place of ghosts and spirits. Visit Masada today and it is easy to imagine the sound of the shofar blown in Elul that very last time.
It certainly fired Alice Hoffman's imagination. Her story of four women who were there until the very end is compelling, powerful, evocative and more. Her characterisation is detailed and believable. The plot is interesting and well developed and for those unfamiliar with the history, it would no doubt be fascinating. Hoffman's gift is her cadence and tone. She treats both her characters and her story with respect. Her imagery is finely crafted, and it is rendered with considerable literary skill.
Hoffman has constructed
The Dovekeepers in four parts, each told in the voice of one of the four women. The motherless Yael seeks refuge at Masada with her father, an assassin still bitter from the loss of his wife. Revka and her two grandsons have survived a massacre by the Romans. Aziza is the Boadica of the piece, a woman who fights like a man despite the strictures against her. Shirah is the midwife, a woman versed in herbs, magic and medicine. All four women work in the dovecote at the highest point in the fortress.
I must confess I have always had a soft spot for women's fiction based on Biblical "events". Rebecca Kohn's
The Gilded Chamber about Queen Esther completely sucked me although I certainly wouldn't describe it as a good book. Ditto Sarah Halter's
Zipporah: Wife of Moses. Anita Diamant's
The Red Tent is "a woman's-eye view" of early Jewish history and it has a huge and devoted fan base. What was fascinating about that book, at least to me, is the depiction of a people wrestling with the responsibility of moving from chaos into civilisation. Personally however, I find
The Dovekeepers a much more substantial novel and certainly as a piece of writing, it is a pleasure.