In Babylon [Paperback]

The theme is announced right on the dedication page: "Trees have roots. Jews have legs." Möring's protagonist, writer of fairy tales Nathan Hollander, tells the story of his family, Jews, always on the way, traveling West. It begins with the clockmaker Magnus Levie, from the area bordering Poland and Lithuania, who starts his trek to the West in 1648, after finding the house of his uncle Chaim burned down by Cossacks, his uncle presumably murdered. After twenty years of wandering he shows up in Holland, in what is its prosperous Golden Age, and finds a welcome there and a place to settle, and he assumes the name Hollander. The trek West is then interrupted for eight generations, all clockmakers in Rotterdam, physicists, engineers. Holland, poignantly characterized as the land of milk and butter, with its biblical echoes of "land overflowing of milk and honey", is almost the promised land, but not quite.

In 1939 Nathan's dad, mom and uncle Herman set ship to America, to escape Hitler and the "Teutonic hordes", without being able to convince their parents to come with them. What I admire in Möring's account of this history is that there is no trace of any attempt to evoke compassion, instead he leaves you with complete respect for how each of these people dealt with the circumstances they found themselves in.

What I consider to be the weakest part of the book is the backbone story, the story in which all the other stories find their connection. What will happen with Nathan and Nina, who find themselves stuck in an unusually severe winter in a remote house without heat, who need to keep alive by hacking antique furniture to pieces and burning it? Who had previously stacked that furniture tightly in the staircase well, and why? As the mystery that needs to pull you along suffiently to get you to read all the other stories it doesn't work very well - fortunately those other stories are strong enough and cohesive enough to do just fine without needing this central mystery.

Nathan has trouble settling anywhere, and to trust others. Möring draws this sharply and contrasts it with the life of Magnus who after his wanderings of twenty years is able to find a home in the world. Will Nathan eventually succeed in this too? Can he overcome his distrust? That is the central tension that keeps him going.

Nathan explains his personal inability to grow roots from the history of his family or that of Jews in general - and this is what keeps his inability in place. How Möring himself sees this is less clear to me.

Well worth reading, if only for his portrayal of Holland by a deliberate outsider. Dutch expatriates, like me, will be able to identify with that very well. And for a flavor of a history of ordinary Jews in a strange world, both bizarre and moving, Möring is an expert cook.

So, then, why do I care enough to give a positive review? First, the writing is extraordinary, and this English translation left me breathless at times. It can be difficult to say that about a translation, but Stacey Knecht either took a great number of liberties, worked closely with Moring, or is absolutely brilliant. Regardless, the writing was appropriate, idiomatic, and comfortable. Without resorting to Nabokovian over-description, Moring communicates sense of place and time (several places and times, really). It reminds me of the stripped-down prose of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in that regard. I felt the cold and craved the tobacco without having it force-fed to me.

Back to the "problems" I note at the beginning of this review. I'm not sure they are problems. Sometimes when I have trouble with a book is this well executed, I have to suspect the shortcoming is on my end, that perhaps I'm missing the literary or thematic nuances. And so it is with In Babylon. I think I'll give it a second read to see what I was misunderstanding. It's certainly worth a first read for anyone.

Marcel Moring has an intriguing way of storytelling, which he shows through Nathan as well. This book becomes stranger and creepier as you get along, and it will leave you thinking about the story and further discovering how odd it was weeks after you finish it. The book has quite a number of pages, and there's a lot to think about, so take your time to read it, but I promise you won't regret reading In Babylon.