Some novels are so stunning that they ruin every other novel you will read for months to come. As they approach perfection, everything else pales in comparison.
“Who by Fire” is one such book.
It’s so brilliant, in fact, that instead of putting it back on my shelf when I finished, I turned to the first page and started reading again. This is not something I ever do, nor have I ever understood why anyone would. There are simply too many books in the world to dedicate time and space to reading something I’ve already read. And yet I couldn’t resist doing so with “Who by Fire.” It’s that good.
The book is Diana Spechler’s first. It’s the story of a family ripped apart, and how they eventually start to stitch themselves back together.
Bits and Ash, 20-something siblings, have grown up in an American family that dissolved after their younger sister, Alena, was kidnapped 13 years before the book begins.
When the story starts in 2002, during the second intifada, Alena’s body still has not been found. Ash, who has always blamed himself for Alena’s disappearance, decides he wants nothing to do with his secular mother, Ellie, and sister, Bits, and abruptly moves to Israel to become an Orthodox Jew. Bits, meanwhile, has become self-absorbed and self-destructive, punching the clock as an elementary school teacher and finding solace in sex with the school’s gym teacher.
She’s about to accept her brother’s desertion until she hears the news: Alena’s remains have been found.
Since Ash won’t take phone calls from either his sister or his mother, Bits buys a plane ticket to Israel. She intends to rescue Ash from the Orthodox Jews she believes have brainwashed him, bring him home for the funeral and at long last save her family.
Spechler weaves the narratives and plot seamlessly with beautiful, albeit simple language.
The story is peppered with biblical, political and historical references that are so authentic you might think the book is mislabeled — that it’s not fiction at all, that maybe Spechler crafted it after she interviewed all parties involved.
Ellie, Bits and Ash take turns narrating the story. That the short, well-paced chapters are told from each perspective provides the reader with a three-dimensional portrait of a family.
Their narration is colorful and witty, creating characters so bold they could be sitting in the room with you, watching you read. The dialogue they have with each other and with the book’s secondary characters is also amazing. It is never contrived, never overdone. You’re simply eavesdropping.
The book is the literary equivalent of a perfectly cooked steak — juicy, satisfying, the kind of meal that arrives at your table so beautiful you want to photograph it, and once finished, the kind you want to write home about, proclaiming the restaurant a five-star, must-see stop on anyone’s schedule.
Yet this absorbing, fast read of a novel is also profound. It explores the tension between Orthodox and secular Jews, the apathy of young American Jews toward Israel.
We learn about the discomfort a ba’al teshuvah feels toward his secular past, and the discomfort his secular relatives feel about his chosen religious practice. We’re asked to consider what kind of God allows a young girl to disappear.
Ultimately, though, “Who by Fire” is about the enduring and complicated bonds between brother and sister, mother and child. Spechler’s story suggests nothing is stronger than family ties, and that no matter the tragedy, family can rescue each other, eventually.
Being the bookworm I am, my only complaint is that Spechler crafted a story so divine she has ruined my reading roster for at least the next two months. Nothing I’ve picked up since “Who by Fire” has been remotely as entertaining, moving or captivating.
“Who by Fire” by Diana Spechler (343 pages, Harper Perennial, $14.95)
Diana Spechler, formerly a Steinbeck fellow at San Jose State University, will speak and sign books during an expo Oct. 25 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, 150 W. San Carlos St., San Jose. She’ll appear at 10 a.m. on a panel with Andre Dubus III, author of “House of Sand and Fog,” with a book signing to follow at 12:15 p.m.