Review of Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

*Kantika* by Elizabeth Graver (2023). Published by Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Something I have been incredibly grateful for while I’m unemployed is my local library system. I happen to live in an area with a solid library and multiple branches in every neighborhood, so if I want books, DVDs, CDs, or even video games, they’ll provide it for free. They even got rid of fees to get more people to come in, and I don’t think theft has become a bigger problem.

Anyways, when I was writing my master’s thesis and still employed, I was often going on their Libby app and checking out audiobooks to listen to while I was working. I got through a lot of books during that time, many of which I ended up reviewing on this blog, but when I’ve been applying to jobs, I’ve been thinking about how I listened to all of these audiobooks.

I checked out Kantika while applying to jobs and working on blog posts, which is what I was describing before. This was a bit of a longer book than what I usually check out, so I did end up listening to it a bit while I was cleaning and cooking sometimes at home. It took a few days to get through this one!

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much.

The story of one family’s exodus out of Turkey and finding Jewish community.

The focus of this book is on Rebecca Cohen and her family, who, at the start of the novel, live in Istanbul in the early 20th-century. Their family has been living in Turkey and Istanbul for generations, as they left Spain centuries ago after the Jews were kicked out of the region.

In Istanbul they’re fairly wealthy and considered a part of the elite, but when war begins and the region begins changing, the school that Rebecca goes to, which is German, is shut down, and one of her best friends ends up moving to New York. Soon it’s time for the Cohens to consider leaving, as their wealth is disappearing and attitudes towards Jews are changing, and, despite Rebecca wanting to go to New York, they go back to Barcelona.

The Spain they return to is still pretty hostile towards the Jewish community and what they do for the community. When Rebecca tries to find a job sewing and as a dressmaker, she finds her Jewish name and identity a burden, as people will literally not hire her because of the fact she’s Jewish. She also doesn’t know much Catalan or Spanish, leading to a completely new learning curve linguistically.

There’s also the fact her husband has a tendency to disappear and go places. There are lengthy discussions about her husband and what he might actually be doing when he leaves Rebecca and their children behind, but as we see later in the novel, not everything is right when he disappears again for a lengthy amount of time.

Later on in the novel something new comes up for her as well: the opportunity to marry a man connected to her past and move from Barcelona to Cuba, then New York City. Her life in New York is going to be difficult, but like the many trials in her past, she’s going to learn to overcome what mountains are in front of her.

This is a novel about migration and hardship, which is partially what made it so compelling to me. Part of my Jewish history knowledge is kind of weak, especially when it comes to Spanish Jews and their expulsion, so it was interesting to see these scenarios come alive and the history discussed in the context of these characters throughout the book.

Overall Thoughts

This was a lengthy novel to get through on audiobook, and, if we’re going to be honest, I don’t know if I would have gotten through it entirely if I was reading it physically. It was a bit dense in certain passages and plot points, and I did find myself wondering when we were going to get to the point at some moments.

That’s my way of saying this could have been trimmed a little bit, which is fine. I think it’s the writing style that had me finding it more difficult to get through. I wanted to see the world these characters were living in come a live a bit more than entirely focusing on their struggles and plight.

I get why this decision was made, but I did ultimately make it to the end because I felt invested in these characters and wanted to see how the novel ended their stories. I think I would read a similar book again, but I would want to be more immersed in the world of this time. The most I was really looking forward to in this book were the descriptions of how she struggled with Catalan or the streets, as it really set the stage for what was to come.

I think someone out there would really love this book, so if it interests you, go ahead and give it a chance! It might become your favorite book, and that’s okay at the end of the day. Taste is so subjective.

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