{"id":616,"date":"2011-12-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T22:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=616"},"modified":"2024-12-31T16:16:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T03:16:52","slug":"the-dovekeepers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/12\/17\/the-dovekeepers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dovekeepers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alison Hoffman<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Simon and Schuster<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, December 17th 2011<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 70AD Roman troops, sacked Jerusalem, destroying the Second Temple and hunting down those few who managed to flee the city.\u00a0 Some took refuge with the Sacarii<\/em>, Jewish rebels led by Eleazar ben Ya\u2019ir in Herod\u2019s hill fortress of Masada, with the settlement eventually swelling to accommodate more than nine hundred fighters and refugees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Roman historian Josephus, the inhabitants committed mass suicide when the stronghold was eventually breached in 73 AD, with only two women and five children surviving the destruction (although there is little material evidence to support this account).\u00a0 Although the exact details are lost in time, The Dovekeepers<\/em> by Alice Hoffman draws heavily on historical, and archeological records to depict Marsada\u2019s last days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Events are described through the fictional eyes of four women who witness its fall; the red-haired assassin\u2019s daughter Yael, elderly baker\u2019s wife Revka, healer and kadeshah<\/em> (witch) Shirah, and Aziza, her warrior daughter.\u00a0 At first glance, these disparate narrators have little in common other than their shared task in the dovecotes where they tend the birds whose eggs feed the people and droppings nourish the fields.\u00a0 Yet each has suffered great personal loss, and been forced to violate religious and cultural rules in order to survive.\u00a0 Over time the sharing of secrets and experiences builds bonds strong bonds of trust and loyalty between them, and as the rains fail, crops wither and Roman garrisons mass outside the walls, they form a united front to protect what little they have left.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel plays out over the course of a year, each quarter presented by one of the women, with their individual stories interspersing events in the besieged fortress.\u00a0 The author is not sparing in her descriptions of the harsh and brutal situations her characters find themselves in, but these events also serve to highlight the broader themes that underlie the novel; faith, friendship, the power of maternal love, and the necessity and strength of silence in a society where women who step outside the boundaries are shunned or worse.\u00a0 The Dovekeepers <\/em>is also faithful to known facts; the Romans may be pitiless, but the rebels, too, are not without blame, attacking and murdering nearby Jewish settlers for food and water.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Hoffman\u2019s recreation of place and time are vivid and realistic, and the tragedy that unfolds is compelling and deserves to be more widely known, I felt strangely disconnected from its characters.  Whilst the four women have very different tales to tell, I had little sense of their individual voices, and as hardship followed hardship I found my attention flagging.  This is as (if not more) likely to be a failure on my part rather than that of the author, and I would certainly recommend this to fans of Hoffman\u2019s other work, but for myself I would have preferred a history without the fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/fall-herods-fortress-seen-through-eyes-women<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alison Hoffman<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Otago Daily Times review December 17th 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[126,147,370,421,18],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-126","tag-alice-hoffmam","tag-fiction","tag-historical","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1513,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/1513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}