I want to bar myself,
from the light
of the midnight stars.
I have no one else to turn to.
Perhaps if I step out
onto the balcony
and fall,
a star will catch me.
I don’t know if I gave The Light of the Midnight Stars a completely fair shake: I started it just before my life got busy again, and when I realised that it was kind of a YA Fantasy Romance, I wasn’t eager to keep picking it up again; I spent way too long with this and it wasn’t entirely the book’s fault. I didn’t love specific aspects of the formatting (and especially the repetition of plotpoints, and of motifs from folklore), and being told from the rotating POVs of three very different sisters, I unevenly connected with them and their stories. But when I sat down to finally finish the last two hours of this book, things started coming together, and in the end, I found myself touched by this family and their fates. I can see how this novel would provide amazing representation for the right reader (especially at the intersection of Jewish, queer, and female), and I may well have enjoyed it more if I had had the time to read it more quickly, but for me it’s a three and a half star read, rounded down. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I have begun to write my own story in these pages. The story I will tell my children.
About a girl who fell in love with a star.
About a girl whose heart was made of fire.
About a girl who found a way to plant herself in the earth and grow.
Set in the Kingdom of Hungary in the fourteenth century, we first meet the three adolescent sisters — Hannah, Sarah, and Levana — as they negotiate fairly ordinary lives as the daughters of a respected Rabbi in their multiethnic town of Trnava. Each of the daughters enjoys a special, magical gift (based on the kabbalah and Jewish folklore), and while Hannah is a healer, Sarah can control fire, and Levana can read the stars, they are careful to hide these powers from their gentile neighbours and avoid accusations of witchcraft. When a killing Black Mist descends on first the surrounding forest and then the town itself, Trnava’s Jewish population finds itself scapegoated and persecuted, and the sisters flee with their parents to nearby Wallachia; a region famous for its freedom of religion, but where the Rabbi decides to keep his family safe by posing as Christians. Hidden gifts, hidden desires, hidden identities: the second half of this book is about three scared and broken young women (and to a lesser extent, their peripheral parents) and their efforts to learn to live and love again.
Some evil is so unspeakable that the only way we can fight it is by telling a story. Over and over again, until history stops repeating itself.
As for the formatting: Author Rena Rossner explains in an afterword that while researching her own grandmother’s ancestry, she came across numerous legends, fairy tales, and authentic historical records from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and she pretty much used all of it in this novel, as stories she’s telling us and as stories that characters tell each other. Events will occur in one of the sister’s lives, and then at some later point, that sister will recount the events to someone else with a “Once upon a time” telling, and the details repeat over and over. And as for the repeating motifs: There are so many twins and dragons and foxes eating grapes, sentient stars falling from the sky and pregnant women walled up in monasteries, and I truly didn’t understand why everything repeats in this way (unless it’s commentary on the repetition of violent antisemitism throughout history? The creeping Black Mist from Part One can be read as a magical dragon attack from local folklore, the Black Death, or antisemitism; in any case, the Jews are certain to be blamed and purged; be forewarned about some shocking violence in this tale.)
There is no good and evil, no light and dark, no man or woman. Every one of us contains multitudes. Every one of us contains a spark of God.
But this isn’t a totally bleak novel, and as I said, I ultimately found the story touching. I feel like maybe Rossner tried to put too much of her research into her final effort — it felt, for sure, like far too much was going on in Sarah’s story (some from folklore, some from the historical record; a weird, unconvincing mashup) — but again, maybe I just didn’t give this book the chance to carry me away. Definitely, I can see how this would appeal to the right readers.
