Worth the Weight

After a series of nonfiction and memoirs, I had forgotten what a sheer pleasure a good novel is to read.  I had started The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish one Friday morning.  With the hot, humid weather, I did not have a strong urge to be outside other than that which was necessary, so I read.

I read and I remembered my childhood summers, spent plowing through books with my mom asking me each day, "don't you want to go outside?"  The answer was almost always "no" and I worked through my booklist.

The Weight of Ink lends itself to long spells of reading and procrastinating all which is non-essential.  I am not normally a fan of titles which jump from one time period to the other, but after a few chapters, this style really did move quite seamless with the noted change of vocabulary for the events of the 1600s.  Reading electronically was also a treat as a definition was just a moment away when needed.  When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about reading.  And now, that I've finished, I want to go back and read it again for the things I have missed.  (I'm relatively certain that I have never wanted to read an historical fiction book twice.)

My last history class was a few years decades ago and even then, I am not sure we covered more than "there was a plague in London" as the teacher tried to cover 100s of years in days or weeks.  Ester, our protagonist, is wonderful, as are the other characters in her household:  Rabbi Mendes and Rivka.  In present day, Helen and the Patricias are magnificent.  I was moved with all the characters at one point or another.  Their strengths, hesitations, and failings are displayed without judgement or applause, leaving the reader to cheer or sigh.

The Q&A included with my copy was also great insight into the story's beginnings and the amount of effort that Kadish put into research was really extraordinary, which lends to the book's heft as a "thinking novel".  I would definitely recommend it for your reading list!