The Betrayal - The Outcast - UNBELIEVABLE!!

sequoia

Sun, Dec 29 2013, 8:52 pm

I was so, so disappointed with these books. What a giant waste of money Sad

It's such a fascinating, fertile idea: the Khazar Khaganate, the only Jewish kingdom between ancient and modern Israel. So much room for imagination! And she turned it into a post-WWII chareidi enclave.

For one, only the rulers and aristocracy were exclusively Jews; the general population was Xtian, Muslim, and pagan as well. It was a multi-religious society. It wasn't a theocracy. The ruling class followed Judaism, but they never appeared to impose it on their subjects. I am reading a history book right now and the author makes the persuasive (to me) argument that the Khazar elite chose Judaism because they didn't want to be subservient to either Mecca or Constantinople.

My point is that the best historical fiction (Boris Akunin, Patrick O'Brian, Georgette Heyer) starts out with tons and tons of research, and then goes from there. And there wouldn't even be that much research to do here; we know so little about the Khazars. But she ignored the little that we do know.

sequoia

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 5:05 pm

sarahd wrote:

Georgette Heyer is considered the best of historical fiction? Oh my. The aristocracy in Regency England were even more insipid time-wasters than I had thought.

The aristocracy in all times were insipid time-wasters.
Maupassant, Jane Austen, Pushkin, Gogol...

sequoia

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 5:53 pm

sarahd wrote:

Jane Austen's characters were much less dissolute than Heyer's.

Depends on the individuals.

All the writers I mentioned were writing about their contemporaries, not historical fiction.
Onegin, the landowners in Dead Souls, Julien in Maupassant's Une Vie all frittered their lives away on stupid BS, adultery, and wastefulness. People get up to no good when they don't have to work for a living.

Rubber Ducky

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 6:17 pm

sequoia wrote:

I was so, so disappointed with these books. What a giant waste of money Sad

If you think of these books as fantasy rather than historical fiction, you may find more to like.

chocolate fondue

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 6:17 pm

LOL, I don't read secular novels (I don't have time to read them anyway.) so I can't comment on the comparison to those authors.

Sequoia, I don't think the author intended that they be historical novels. Rather, she just had a convenient time and place to put a Jewish kingdom that was authentic enough for frum readers to allow themselves to believe such a setting. (Did that make sense?)

If she was indeed writing a historical novel, about a well-documented time period, I would have expected more research and authenticity, like Henye Meyer and Etka Gitel Schwartz put into their novels. This is more like 'frum Jewish fantasy', or as close as you can get to it, without disturbing the sensibilities of frum readers. With lots of morals and mussar included, of course.

sequoia

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 6:28 pm

Rubber Ducky wrote:

If you think of these books as fantasy rather than historical fiction, you may find more to like.

I dislike them for other reasons as well: the banging-over-the-head mussar, the lack of good female characters in the second book, the increasingly hysterical style.

D.B. Jackson writes fantasy-historical fiction works that take place in 1760's Boston. There's magic and spells and other fantastical elements, but the realistic elements are well-researched, and he provides a list of sources. So there's no inherent contradiction.

chocolate fondue

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 6:56 pm

sequoia wrote:

I agree with you about that. The mussar/moral could've been a lot more subtle.

I actually enjoyed the scenes with Istrak and Hala in The Outcast, but you make a good point about the female characters or lack thereof.

I guess if you're used to secular literature, very little in frum literature is going to compare. Especially as writers learn to write well from other authors. A writer who has read a limited range of books is not going to write as well as an author who reads all kinds and styles of books. I think that's why most good frum authors are baalei teshuva or gerrim themselves.

sequoia

Mon, Dec 30 2013, 7:09 pm

Ya know, I feel weirdly uncomfortable with Dostoevsky being referred to as secular literature. He just wasn't a secular kind of guy.

But I know what you mean.

The thing is, M. Kenan has an incredible imagination and great tenacity, two vital ingredients for good writing. She appears to be constrained by certain realia, though.

sequoia

Tue, Dec 31 2013, 1:09 pm

sarahd wrote:

Dostoevsky may not have been secular, but I don't think his literature was meant to be religious. So then it's secular literature.

But I think it was! I think he wanted to draw people to God, with examples like Alesha Karamazov, Prince Myshkin, Sonya Marmeladova. Often in fact he sounds like frum literature.

Why it was necessary to write mostly about CRAZY people is another question.

Terri

Fri, Mar 28 2014, 12:21 pm

Just finished the Betrayal; I wish the ending was more conclusive. Can someone please post a summary of The Outcast, more detailed than what was mentioned earlier in this thread? I'm really curious to hear how it ties up...

Thank you!

PinkFridge

Sun, May 11 2014, 10:09 pm

Sorry Sequoia, I just mentioned The Outcast on another thread. Yeah, I noticed the imbalance with women but I still got totally lost and absorbed in it, and and had a much easier time keeping track than the first book (and not because I read the first book, I vaguely remembered it). I thought it was great! Should anyone go out and buy it? I generally don't buy novels, I wait to borrow them from friends or libraries.

And if the ending had a lot of loose ends, I'm sure it's because there's a third in the works.

PinkFridge

Tue, May 13 2014, 8:57 am

zaq wrote:

Hmmm...these are clearly not the books I read with those titles, which are about the Amish.

Probably not published by Artscroll Tongue Out

Also, they're translations. I don't remember if The Outcast had a different title but The Betrayal was originally called Mahalalel.