2021 Book Review #21: The Light of the Midnight Stars

 

This book.

One of the VERY best I have ever read and I have been reading avidly since my teen years.

Here is a list of some of the very best books I've read.  By "best" I mean in a literary sense as well as one that just resonated with me, changed me, made an impact:

1. Les Miserables
2. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
3. The Book Thief
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
6. Sacred Pathways
7. Silas Marner
8. Where the Crawdads Sing
9. The 13th Tale
10. Eternal on the Water
11. The Secret Life of Bees
12. The Killing Tree
13. The Memory Thief
14. A Tale of Two Cities
15. Of Mice and Men
16. The Lovely Bones
17. The Color Purple
18. Christy
19. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
20. Still Alice
21. A Spark of Light

This one I just finished??  The one pictured above?  It now moves up to spot #2, right under Les Miserables. It's the best book I have read all year.(And I've read 21 so far since January) 

In fact it's the best one since I read Where the Crawdads Sing about 2 years ago. 

 I won't do it justice with this review.  It's just too deep.

STORY SUMMARY

King Solomon and all of his wisdom lives on in his descendants in Hungary.   The Solomonars are Papa, Mama and their 3 daughters:  Hannah, Sarah, and Levana.

Hannah is a calm person and book smart. She can encourage plants to grow even when the weather is bitter and cold. 

Sarah is strong and the defiant one. She can control the impulsive nature of fire.  In fact, she can start fires.  Magically. 

Levana, the "fey" one (supernatural powers) can "read" the path of the stars to learn their secrets.

When a darkness moves across Europe and threatens the very lives of every Jewish family, the rabbi (Papa) feels forced to flee their home in the Hungarian woods.  They end up in Romania  and soon realize that they cannot escape evil or danger.

Each sister needs to make an impossible choice in order to survive......and this will change the fate of their family forever.

MY THOUGHTS

I want to tell you the entire story but it would totally ruin it for you.

This story is part historical fiction set in the 1300s of Eastern Europe.  The "black mist" is a metaphor I believe for the bubonic plague (Black Death).  It is also part Jewish folklore and some of the stories from the Old Testament, from a Jewish perspective, are included.  It is also a fairy tale/fantasy.  It's brilliant.

The author's grandparents were from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, and Romania.  She says their stories inspire her writing work.  In fact, she used some of the stories in her novel. 

The 3 sisters and their personalities are very well developed.  

When the twins are born (to Levana) they are marked with a star upon their foreheads.  This is a metaphor for the star of David that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. 

The book is full of metaphors and symbolism and that's something I really love in a good piece of literature and which is sorely lacking in much contemporary fiction.

This fairy tale doesn't have a happy ending but the story will linger in your mind long after you turn the last page. 

The author has some very helpful notes in the back including a glossary of the Hebrew, Romanian,  Bulgarian and the Hungarian words/phrases used. I turned to the glossary often and was thankful for it.

Once the Solomonar family arrives in Romania, the story takes a different spin.  It is told by each of the sister's voices like in the first part, but now they have different names as they need to hide their identity so they won't be persecuted.  It is just so brilliantly executed you need to experience it for your self.

The book's main themes are: survival, religious belief, identity, and love. 

The book touches on the topics of:  marriage choices, love, loss/death, persecution, betrayal. 

This book is about good vs evil.  Darkness vs. Light.

And....even in the midst of tragedy and evil and not a happy fairy tale ending, Light still wins.  Every time.

 The characters are all strong personalities.  Every single one of them. 

The author touches on today's obsession with gender changes/roles.  It's quite well done and makes for a rather modern twist. You don't often associate gender confusion with that time period. (the 14th century) Yet we know that people throughout the ages grappled with their identity issues.

This is a very powerful book. 

The author states that the story is based on an "incredible history of stories and storytellers that have come before" her. 

Here are some quotes that jumped out at me:

"Where there is darkness, there must be light, or we couldn't recognize the darkness for what it is.  Maybe in my lifetime I was meant to love both a man and an angel." (pg 216, The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner, c. 2021) (spoken by Anna aka Hannah)

"...my eyes are still trying to re-form this Theodora into the shape of the person I know (Theodor). The longer I stare at him----her---them, the more I see the same person.  Everything merges into one........"do any of us really know who and what we are?" I say quietly.  "I think we are always in the process of becoming" " (pg 233) (spoken by Stanna aka Sarah)

"Wisdom is the bursting forth, the shining of light in the world.  It is the only force in the world that can defeat the darkness of ignorance."  

and 

"Evil, once unleashed, needs very little encouragement to spread.  Like a spark that falls in a dry forest, it is destined to burn hard, and fast, and destroy those that get caught in its furnace." (pg 263) 

"In the end, we do what we must to survive, even if we don't understand the choices we make.  There are many different kinds of resistance. Sometimes resistance means letting go." (pg 297)

"But life has a way of surprising us all, I suppose.  And even though some destinies are written in the stars, or rooted in the ground----it doesn't mean we don't get a chance on this earth to try and change them.  If our God can move heaven and earth and we are but vessels of His Light there is no end to what we might become---if we allow ourselves the freedom."(pg 378) (Spoken by Hannah)

This book is powerful and strong and has important messages. 

I highly encourage you to  read it.....it's an experience that is lingering in my soul.  

In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 14 and older.

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 10.