Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Available within 2 business hours
| ISBN-13: | 9780802122735 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2014 |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 1,062,465 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.60(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d) |
The bride stood like a pillar of salt, rigid under layers of itchy petticoats. Sweat dripped down the hollow of her back and collected in pools under her arms staining the ivory silk. She edged closer to The Bedeken Room door, one ear pressed up against it.
She heard the men singing. Their shouts of ‘lai-lai-lai!’ rolled down the dusty synagogue corridor. They were coming for her. This was it. This was her day. The day her real life started. She was nineteen and had never held a boy’s hand. The only man to touch her had been her father and his physical affection had dwindled since her body had curved and ripened.
"Sit down, Chani-leh, show a little modesty. Come, the Kallah does not stand by the door. Sit, sit!’
Her mother’s face had turned grey. The wrinkles gleamed as the make-up slid towards her collar. The plucked brows gave her a look of permanent surprise. Her mouth was compressed into a frosty pink line. Mrs Kaufman sagged under the weight of her mousy wig. Beneath, her hair was grey and wispy. An old woman at forty-five: tired. Chani was her fifth daughter, the fifth to stand in a Bedeken Room, the fifth to wear the dress. Nor would she be the last. Like
Babushka dolls, three younger daughters had emerged after her.
Chani remained at her post. ‘Shouldn’t they be here by now?’
‘They’ll be here soon enough. You should be davening for all your single friends. Not everyone’s as lucky as you are today, Baruch HaShem.’
A Conversation with Eve Harris, the Author of The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
You spent time teaching at an ultra-Orthodox girls' school and this experience informed the novel. When did you realize that there was a story to tell?
During the year I taught at the school, I got married under the auspices of an Orthodox rabbi. I experienced first-hand many of the rituals Chani goes through as a bride and after I left, I continued thinking about the strangeness of the Charedi world. About a year after I left the school, I began a writing course and I was the only one in the room that did not have a novel to complete; merely a set of paltry short stories that garnered short shrift from the tutor. My confidence was knocked and I left the class feeling deflated and miserable. A few days later, I began the fight back. When I next read to the class, a few weeks later, it was the passage that would become the first chapter of the novel. Suffice to say it got a much more positive reaction—and everyone bought me a pint in the pub afterwards!
The book was longlisted for the Booker Prize - what was that experience like? What did you do when you found out?
It was completely unbelievable. In fact, when I heard I was actually deeply asleep and thought I was dreaming. It was 7:30 am and I'd fallen back asleep after a terrible night due to a summer storm. I was woken by my husband bounding into the room, leaping on the bed and shouting at me. I thought something had happened to our toddler (who was thankfully also asleep!) He thrust a phone at my face and that's when I heard my agent's teary voice telling me I'd been longlisted. Then the world turned upside down and the phone started to ring off the hook.
How did the novel begin - as a short story? Or was the full structure there from the start?
It began with a very strong image of a bride dressed in all her finery, waiting in the Bedeken Room for her husband-to-be to lower her veil. The dress seemed to take on a life of its own. I kept thinking about it and how impatient and nervous the bride must be feeling. The structure developed from this single image. She was the core and the story radiated outwards, almost in rings, from her and her dress.
The book's characters are astonishingly strong—from the Rebbetzin, who is starting to question her life thus far and is losing her faith, to young Chani Kaufman, strong-willed but also young and sometimes quite wide-eyed—how did you get the inspiration for them?
Chani is an amalgamation of all the naughtier Charedi schoolgirls I met and enjoyed teaching. The Rebbetzin is a consolidation of the frustrations I felt for women in that world (although I am sure many would disagree with me). There is plenty of myself in both characters too!
How did you write the sections set in Jerusalem in 1982 - did you approach those in a different way from the sections in contemporary London?
I lived in Israel for 3 years as a new immigrant many years before I wrote the book. I spent half that time living in Jerusalem, falling madly in love with the city. When I was 18 during my gap year, I lived on campus as a foreign student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and spent plenty of time sitting on the basketball court, watching the lights of the Old City flicker below. I dug deep into those memories.
What was the most difficult part of writing the book? The most rewarding?
Having never written a novel before, the structure was the biggest challenge. I ended up with a lot of colored post-it notes stuck to two flattened cardboard boxes donated by my local corner shop. Each note represented a chapter and each color represented a different character. I moved them around until I felt dizzy! Writing is a grueling, lonely slog, but the days when it just felt right and my characters leapt off the page were the best.
There are aspects of the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle that seem very limiting to those looking in from the outside, but at the same time, much of it seems almost liberating. Can you elaborate?
I would agree with that statement. In the secular world, there is no framework and we have little to fall back on. Our lives are chaotic and many struggle to find direction and some sort of meaning in life. In the Charedi world, everything has a meaning and a reason. Prayer, ritual and customs provide the backbone to people's lives. Their futures are usually mapped out for them and so they don't have to worry too much about carving a career for themselves or finding a partner to love. The year has a shape and a flow to it, so that people know what's coming next, both temporally and spiritually. To have those answers can be very comforting.
Who have you discovered lately?
Hannah Kent's Burial Rites and Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street.
[Both were 2013 Discover Great New Writers selections - Ed.]
Each year Barnes & Noble selects a bookshelf’s worth of must-read works for the B&N Discover Great New Writers program. 2014′s summer picks range from searing memoir to black comedy to a fascinating study of bees, and represent some of the most exciting new voices in literature. Don’t miss a single one: The Steady Running of […]
