“A Guide for the Perplexed: by Dara Horn, Norton, 2013
Josie Ashkenazi is at the top of her game. She is the chairman of a software company that markets Genizah, a product she invented, that archives virtually everything in a person’s life. She has a loving husband who is her partner in the company, a 6-year-old daughter, and a bitterly jealous sister, Judith, who was never as smart or successful as Josie.
This plot line echoes the biblical story of Joseph. Judith convinces Josie to accept an invitation to consult at the newly restored Alexandria Library in Egypt; and when Josie is kidnapped, Judith takes over Josie’s life. However, Dara Horn — an amazing novelist who never tells a simple story when she can intertwine two or even, as in the case of this novel, three stories — also introduces the Egyptian experiences of two historical Jewish thinkers: Maimonides and Solomon Schechter.
In 12th century Cairo, Maimonides is mourning the loss of his beloved brother David, the victim of a shipwreck en route to India. Schechter, in the late 19th century, is in the process of rescuing Jewish history in the form of the documents in the Cairo Genizah, which he has purchased and is shipping to Cambridge. One of those documents is David’s last letter to Maimonides before the shipwreck. During her captivity, Josie has one book with her that she reads at night, and the book keeps her sane. It is Maimonides “Guide for the Perplexed.” The manner in which the author combines these disparate Egyptian narratives into an amazing whole is beyond masterful.
Asthma, too, is a strand of this novel. The need to be able to breathe freely is an issue with which all the protagonists must deal.
Dara Horn’s previous novels, “In the Image,” The World to Come” and “All Other Nights,” melded Jewish history and tradition with the history of the era in which the novel was set. In “A Guide for the Perplexed” she has succeeded again. This novel is essential for Dara Horn fans; and with its complex plot and flawed but heroic protagonists the book should win her many additional readers.
In 1899, an unlovable Jewish bachelor hires a shady wonder-working hermit to make him a golem wife that he plans to take to America. However, in Helene Wecker’s absorbing first novel, plans rarely come to fruition.