Sometimes I can't like a book and I can't explain why. This is such a book. I can say a few things:

We are kept distant from the real selves of the main characters, a brother and sister who take over the care of a special Jewish cemetery, a cemetery of saints, set high on a mountaintop, apart from the ravages and disease down below. The time is early 20th century and the place is eastern Europe.

The brother, Gad, and the sister, Amalia, are represented most often by their pronouncements and their expressions, as read by the other. It is possible to grasp that the two look at the world differently - Gad is siezed by a sense of mission to his religion yet at the same time cannot seem to make himself feel at home with it. Amalia submits to her brother's desires most of the time, perhaps because that's how she grew up, yet is capable of grasping joy from very little and appears less obsessed with "doing the right thing".

Conversations between the two are short and stilted. Gad spends a great deal of his time making pronouncements: "It is wrong to bring animals into the house." As if, somehow, he is given the wisdom and he must impart it to the naive woman and scold her if she behaves improperly. Amalia,for her part, makes her thoughts known primarily through expressions, which are often explained "as if she said..."

I couldn't like them. Of the two I liked Amalia better but couldn't get to know her really. When I can't like a character in a book or at least feel some sort of identity with one I find it very hard to finish and to like the book. This book is easy enough to read and very short, so I did finish it. I hope others will read it and will set down their thoughts here as well, because I'll be very interested in them.

RELEASE NOTES:

on a table inside