A smart, original, and provocative debut novel about a close-knit Jewish family in London pushed to the brink when they suspect their daughter is a witch-for readers of “The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin and “Everything Is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Hannah and Eric Rosenthal are a successful, devoutly religious couple living in North London with their three children and Eric's father Yosef, a Holocaust survivor. When Yosef dies and their only daughter Elsie disappears, the family descends into a living nightmare. Four days later, she returns-pale, dripping wet, and different.
As events around Elsie become increasingly bewildering, Hannah and Eric begin to suspect she is under the influence of black magic, while her atheist brother Tovyah, a brilliant university student, believes his sister is suffering a mental collapse caused by his parents' antiquated religious beliefs. Can the family be reconciled before tearing itself apart?
Part “The Secret History” with a dash of “The Royal Tenenbaums”, this stunningly written novel questions what it means to be tied to an ancient ethical and metaphysical system, and if you reject that system, what is left of your identity? Told through revolving points of view, we witness a family trying to reckon with both historical and personal tragedy, to electrifying ends. A darkly comic and compellingly original meditation on family, faith, and generational trauma, “Fervor” is entertaining, erudite, terrifying, and unforgettable.
