Your Mouth Is Lovely : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Haunting portrait of pre-revolutionary Russian shtetl life
Review: Exploring her own Russian-Jewish roots, Canadian author Richler ("Throw Away Angels") sets her first U.S.-published novel in pre-revolutionary Russia, with its pogroms, poverty, foment and brutal repression. The book takes the form of a chronicle written from a Siberian prison by 23-year-old Miriam for the daughter she has not seen since the day of her birth, six years before. It's late winter, 1911, and the long season has taken its toll.

"We're beyond tired, beyond cold. The blood that fills my mouth is sticky, souring even as I still draw breath. Job floats unbidden into mind. NAKED CAME I INTO THE WORLD AND NAKED WILL I LEAVE IT THITHER. The cold drags on even as the light returns. I write to you, but my hand falters. TO EVERYTHING ITS SEASON, and mine was this: twenty-three years in the bowels of the turning century. I feel my end coming. THE LORD GIVETH AND HE TAKETH AWAY. Then I cough again and it's the taste of my own blood that spurs me on. Is it not still thick and pungent and rich as the heart that pumps it? I pick up the pen once again and move it across the page."

Miriam then begins her life story with the circumstances of her birth in a rural shtetl in 1887. Her mother drowned herself the day after her daughter's birth and Miriam spent her first six years with a large, boisterous peasant family before her shoemaker father remarried and reclaimed his daughter. The talented seamstress, Tsila, his new wife, her face "marked by Divine anger" (a large strawberry birthmark) is considered ill-tempered, but Miriam, though intimidated, is struck by the beauty of the unmarked profile and soon benefits from her stepmother's sharp intellect. True, the house is quieter than Miriam is used to and Tsila has no patience for the gossip and superstition of village life, but she teaches Miriam to read and fosters an interest in the wider world.

Unfortunately, revolutionary fervor comes to the shtetl while Miriam is old enough to be wandering about on her own, but not old enough to benefit from her stepmother's wisdom. Flattered by an offer of friendship, Miriam toys with revolutionary ideas, feeling like a fraud for her lack of real interest. Nevertheless she hides a parcel of dynamite for a young man she barely knows, frightening Tsila into setting in motion a plan for emigrating to Argentina. But before they go Miriam journeys to Kiev to find Tsila's sister who is shamefully cohabiting with a young revolutionary. Miriam is seduced by the city - its multitudes, architecture, variety - all its teeming life. Day by day, week by week, she resists returning home, and once again is drawn to the young intellectuals - the revolutionaries.

Richler successfully evokes the emotions and wonder of a young girl at the turn of the century, struck by her first metropolis, falling almost without volition into the danger and excitement of revolution. Miriam is never political. Her fate is a simple accident of timing, and all the sadder for that. Richler's brief portraits of other revolutionaries hint at similar irrelevant motivations: rebelling against a parent, following a man, winning respect, seeking thrills, bonding with the group.

Richler's moving portrayal of the shtetl details its joys and agonies in a vivid depiction of daily life. We see the closeness of people who've lived beside one another forever and their narrow mindedness too, gossip, failure and superstition passed on through generations. We see them at work and at worship, religion woven into the fabric of their lives. The devout pride of Jewish life lives hand-in-hand with the fear of pogroms, often instigated by the manipulations of a government and aristocracy eager to deflect the population's rage from themselves.

The writing is richly descriptive, the characters subtly drawn. Tsila is particularly memorable, with her trenchant wit and her strong, deep capacity for love. It's a story of inevitable tragedy, of luck and irony, of coming of age in the midst of currents stronger than any individual. A fine and absorbing novel.

Rating:
Summary: A bittersweet tale of both motherhood and daughterhood
Review: Modern Russian literature is renowned for its ability to render revolutionary action and violence into poetry and lyrical prose. Passionate, as well as intellectually and emotionally challenging, it is often able to present darkness and sorrow in a beautiful artistic light. Nancy Richler, in her second novel, has taken the desperation found in many of the Russian classics, softened it with Jewish folkloric style and created a touching and memorable novel. In YOUR MOUTH IS LOVELY, part Trotsky, part Tolstoy and part Sholom Aleichem, Richler presents the failed 1905 Russian Revolution from the perspective of shtetl, or village, Jews and presents the shtetl and its inhabitants from the perspective of one young Jewish revolutionary.

The story centers on Miriam, the narrator of the tale. It is 1912; she is only 23 and serving a life sentence in a Siberian prison for violent and subversive action against the state. But her intent in writing is not to disseminate socialist ideals. Instead she is writing to the daughter who does not know her and never will, the daughter she bore in prison. She is writing her life story. So, it is with the tenderness of a mother's love that the tale is told, despite the hardships the characters endure.

Miriam's mother drowned herself the day Miriam was born, still grieving from the loss of her infant son. Miriam's father, Aaron Lev, put her in the care of the wet-nurse Lipsa, who raised Miriam as one of her own for almost six years. When Aaron Lev marries Tsila, a strong-willed and sharply intelligent young woman, they send for Miriam and thus a new stage in her life begins. Under Tsila's tutelage, Miriam continues her Jewish education, but is also taught to think for herself and question the world around her. Tsila, known as a sour woman, shows Miriam the only maternal love she ever knows. Miriam quickly adapts to her new life with Tsila and Aaron Lev --- and adaptability becomes a theme in her life as she is incredibly impressionable in her acts and opinions. Despite the home she shares with Tsila and Aaron Lev and the predictable patterns of shtetl life, she is haunted by the deaths of her mother and brother, neither of whom she ever knew. As she grows up, the spirit of revolution moves many Jews across the countryside. Tsila's sister Bayla is one of them and eventually moves to Kiev to create the bombs that will fuel the revolution. Aaron Lev and Tsila, desiring a new life free of anti-Semitism, pogroms and brutal winters, decide to move to Argentina. Miriam is sent to Kiev to locate Bayla and the socialist agitators and radicals quickly put her to work. The illegal Bund meetings she attended in the shtetl cannot prepare her for the type of life she is about to embark upon.

After several months in prison following an initial arrest, living with a mysterious man named Wolf in the typhus-ridden ravines of Kiev and a single sexual encounter, Miriam finds herself again arrested but this time pregnant and facing the death penalty. Her sentence commuted to life in a Siberian prison, Miriam hands her newborn baby over to Bayla who then flees for Canada, pretending the girl is her own. Wracked with illness and depression, Miriam begins her autobiography, at once her own story, the story of the shtetl and the story of the futile attempt at revolution. For Miriam, confused for most of her life on the true identity of her parents and feeling rootless and disconnected, the connections and roots she creates for her daughter are the only gifts she can offer --- and the gift she longed to be given all her life.

YOUR MOUTH IS LOVELY is not really about political or social revolution --- it is about the attempt (and failure) of one woman to revolutionize her own life and spirit. But Miriam is doomed to fail at this enterprise, as she is truly disconnected from the world around her. Some readers may be frustrated at Miriam's passivity and lack of passion, but Richler is true to her character and doesn't save her in the end. Miriam's disconnectedness and longing set the tone of the book, which is both sweet and sorrowful. Her hopes for herself are lost but, because of her daughter, who is safe in Montreal, her life has not been without meaning and purpose. Richler's Miriam is not a very dedicated revolutionary. Instead she is at all times a lost little girl who is always searching for something she cannot quite put her finger on. Yet, she is sympathetic.

YOUR MOUTH IS LOVELY is a bittersweet tale of motherhood and daughterhood. Richler is a wonderful and vivid storyteller; her characters brighten even the darkest setting with their very humanity.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: This novel is an interesting look into rural Jewish culture and society within imperial Russia. It is also a fascinating look at women giving their lives for the "cause" in the 1905 Russian Revolution. I quite enjoyed this story. Miriam, the main character, is an interesting individual with a dramatic past, present, and future. The writing is excellent and the story keeps you interested. I did get a bit lost in the Jewish nomenclature of special days and events, but a dictionary helped with that.