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Title: A Journey to the End of the Millennium - A Novel of the Middle Ages
ISBN: 0156011166
Author:
A. B. Yehoshua
Publicate Date: 2000-06-15
Publish: 2000-06-15
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.98
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.90
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.20
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A Puzzling Bore
Bringing this book with me to the Middle East, I thought it would provide a nice "read-track" for my travels. Not knowing much of Israeli literature, I went with what I thought was an interesting blurb describing a story set against an exciting backdrop of the coming millennium (1000 A.D.).
Now I can't speak for the author's body of work, but this books is an unqualified bore! It took me weeks of piecemeal reading to get through the endless, speech-free, run-on prose. Why Yehoshua chose to dominate the text with his own narration without giving voice to his characters I can't understand. Dialog imbues literary characters with personality and gives insight into their souls. Yehoshua's characters, however, are basically puppets in a marionette show orchestrated entirely by him, and to little end.
As for the plot, this humorless tale of a Jewish merchant's quest to reestablish a commercial partnership with his nephew severed by the latter's new bride over the merchant's polygamy goes on and on and goes off on unwanted tangents about the crossing paths of culture, religion, and ethnicity. Yehoshua would've been better served writing a cultural anthropology dissertation.
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2: A wasted journey
Opinion among reviewers appears to be polarized, as many praise the book as find it highly unsatisfactory. I am well into the latter category.
Others have summarized the story. I found the central plot line to be so incredible as to be beyond reason, so much so, in fact, that my main motivation for continuing to read was to determine whether he really meant what he seemed to be saying. Yehoshua describes a medieval mid-European Jewess who first attempts to break up her husband's business partnership, then threatens divorce, because her husband's partner, who lives a thousand miles away in a Moslem country, has two wives. He never satisfactorily explains why she goes to these extremes. Further, he never adequately explains why the business partner would undertake the extremely hazardous journey from Africa to mid-Europe bringing along both his wives, and others, to confront the complainant. Finally, the ease with which one of the travelers, a widowed Rabbi, leaves his son in the hands of the complainant when the party returns to Africa, defies all belief.
The writing has merits but all the characters are paper thin and one dimensional. Further, emotions are described in terms worthy of the Barbara Cartland school: people do not simply want something, their hearts long for it; they do not question but are darkly suspicious; they do not look at each other but caress with their eyes; they are not just upset but pierced to their soul, and so on and on.
Finally, the novel's title would lead one to expect that there is major significance in its setting, the year 999 CE. However, apart from some minor references to the millennium the events described could equally well have occurred at any time during the preceding or subsequent 150 years.
What's the point?
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3: Long-winded and unclear look at an unkown time
The centuries surrounding the beginning of the Second Christian Millenium are a relatively unknown time even among those, such as myself, with an interest in History. The light that was shed on this time by the book was interesting to me, as were the concepts of Paris as a small town and Europe as a wilderness. While some of the characters were interesting, the narrator spent too much time telling what was happening rather than showing it (i.e. through dialogue). The made the book difficult to get throug, especially in the final chapters.
*spoiler*
The symbolism of the book was unclear as well, most especially the strange cottage to which the young black slave fled after stumbling on it. I felt some of the sexual descriptions were gratuitous and unecessary and while the refusal of the author to give the wives names seemed to echo the tendendcy in the Bible to do the same to women, the Bible does give names to those who play an important role. Although I disagree to the reveiwer that this was done with mysoginist intent. Unfortunately the symbolism was either too subtle for the average reader or it completely missed the mark, and I lean toward the latter.
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4: It takes a millenium to finish this book
I believe that I was possibly unlucky to choose this book as my introduction to Mr. Yehoshua's work, for I am told that he is a fabulous writer and a fine creator of believable dialogues. Well, there are no dialogues, and the story drags. The book however had many characteristics that should make me love it! My training is that of a historian, I fancy -- in my spare time -- reading on the Middle Ages, I've been fascinated with travel writing, I've lived in North Africa and to top it off, I've done some reading on Judaism in the Iberian Penninsula. And yet this book proved to be a collection of frustrations and it appeared never to end.
Mr. Yehoshua chose to base his narrative in the oral tradition typical not only to the Middle Ages but also present in Jewish and North African traditions. So the development of his story is as repetitive as those told from generation to generation, to remind each of the listeners the main characteristcs of what's being mentioned. He does it however without the charm that a colloquial narrator would infuse. This distant omnipresent narrator who tells us the story instead took away any sense of drama, of importance, of eagerness, and of deeply felt conflicts. The narrative line seemed adrift, like a boat going from port to port without a chart.
There was also not a single character that involved this reader emotionally. It felt like an intellectual exercise that ended up being too boring to stand. It was a struggle for me to finish the book and frankly, life is too short for the daily sacrifice I was inflicting on myself.
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5: Has Its Moments, But Disappointing Overall
I approached "A Journey to the End of the Millennium" eagerly. Since the book was subtitled "A Novel of the Middle Ages," I anticipated a compelling story that would illuminate the times, flowing from a talented writer's fertile imagination. Perhaps the subtitle is actually a typo for "A Novel of Middle Age," which strikes me as more appropriate. Instead of painting a landscape rooted in a specific time and place, the author's concerns and energies are focused on the domestic and commercial travails of a middle-aged merchant. We follow him as he seeks to legitimatize his enlightened domestic situation of having two wives in benighted Europe, saving a business partnership in the process. Predictably, one of the wives has to die to normalize the other relationships. Guess whether the young nubile wife or the older chubbier wife dies. Your answer gives a flavor for the tediousness of this text.The timelessness that many reviewers find a strength of the novel was, for me, a disappointing drawback. Granted, the measure of time is arbitrary and human concerns and relationships are universal and timeless, but this commonplace insight is hardly robust enough to carry the book. The author's style is at times promising, but the text does not approach a literary height. Rather than drawing the reader in and focusing a close examination of the implications hidden or obscured in the text, Yehoshua provided me with an exercise in tedium. This is one of those books I wanted to put aside halfway finished, but hesitated to do so in hopes of a revelation that never comes. I am frankly puzzled why so many reviewers found this book compelling. Unfortunately, this was the first book I read by Yehoshua. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, it will be the last. Even a great writer can produce an unworthy book. Others more familiar with his canon will have to decide if that is the case here.
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