This month's book club book was The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. One of our club members had visited Masada last year; she was the one who chose the book. For her the story came to life, and she could retrace her memory of that place. Having seen this book advertised in the Barnes & Noble and Amazon email newsletters I was intrigued by the plot description: four woman's journey of love, pain and secrets that led them all to Masada.
Toni Morrison described the story as harrowing. A reviewer on Goodreads.com described it as bleak. I have ventured past the half way point but decided to stop. To put it simply, it is a sad tale. There were a few points in the story where a spark of happiness was likely to be kindled but alas no. The story is told from the perspective of four different women, each retelling her story. The details differed somewhat, but the narrative voices were not distinct. However, the book is a grand feat. Very wordy and imbued with LOTS of sensory details. I wanted to like the book, but that is not to say I dislike it...at least I don't strongly dislike it. It did not capture my curiosity as I had anticipated. Perhaps it was because after having completed sixty percent of the book (that's roughly 307 pages) I found the women's stories to be rather repetitive.
Sarah Fay of The New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote:
The abundance of overstatement and clumsy description minimizes the impact of actual dramatic events. When the women take lovers, steal babies, cast spells, their actions feel contrived. Although, toward the end of the novel, one of the characters explains the uniformity of expression by declaring that she is passing on the stories of those who did not survive, this seems equally unconvincing.
In her acknowledgments, Hoffman reminds us that she is neither a historian nor a religious scholar and declares that the novel is meant to “give voice” to the women who participated in the Jewish struggle, whose stories “have often gone unwritten.” I have no doubt that “The Dovekeepers” was conceived as a worthy project, but good research and good intentions don’t necessarily yield good novels.
Lesley McDowell of The Independent wrote:"The Dovekeepers" is a stunningly crafted work about a tragic and heroic time. It also showcases Hoffman's immense gift for telling stories about women, magic and complex relationships. Perhaps "The Dovekeepers" is the masterpiece she has been working toward all along.
It is a story full of contemporary resonances, from the fleeing of families away from the fighting, the building of a giant wall round the Jewish fortress, and the atrocities committed by both sides during fighting. It is primarily a woman's story, though, in which childbirth and love play the largest parts, and mothers and daughters populate the landscape, even when those mothers are absent. When Hoffman first began publishing, her world – in which women organised themselves against patriarchal laws with secret codes and signs, ancient spells and rites – was less familiar. Since then, this alternative view of female power has become more commonplace, almost a cliché.
Whether Hoffman is conscious of that, or whether she is responding to tougher times, she effectively sets both Yael (who sees off a leopard by herself) and Aziza (who goes into the heart of the battle) against the feminine power of Shirah. These dove-keepers are not a happy alliance, cohesive in their womanly tasks. They possess different histories, but are forced to confront a common enemy. But this is still a feminised version of this moment in history, and Hoffmann has made it a real tour de force.
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