Rhoda Lerman (1936–2015)

After reading Rhoda Lerman's Call Me Ishtar, I want to read any other book she has written. Here, in The Book of the Night, Lerman builds us a world of complexity and change, taking place at a 10th century Scottish island abbey, where even the 20th century intrudes.
A very young girl, Celeste, is brought there by her father, who she describes as very wise though also a madman, and who teaches her about alphabets, about myths, about evolution and thermodynamics, and who lets the monks on the island believe she is a boy while she grows toward womanhood and beyond. There is Celeste, the father, two other women, monks, village people, gods, sheep, birds, and a white cow.
Celeste tells most of the story, mostly in the present tense, but there is a scribe named Generous, who in shorter passages chronicles other happenings.
The abby is of the old native religion, which is struggling not to be replaced by the new faith from Rome.
The story is detailed, slow, restricted by place but expanded by thought, and I grew from wondering if it was worth my time reading, to becoming committed and fascinated at thirty or forty pages into this unbelievable book.
There are so many characters, and so many plots, that actors and actions sometimes blur together and make no sense until they reappear later. Google is very helpful.
Celeste is on a quest, and her story builds as she grows and succeeds and fails and moves us toward the conclusion of this strange, wonderful book.… (más)

This is a great story, with much to relate to, much to wonder about. It’s still relevant in 2021 and deserves wide reading.
Ishtar, Queen of heaven, has come again in the guise of a housewife and rock band manager in New York state in the 1960s. She speaks of her powerful past and limited present. Well, maybe not all that limited.
She comes across convincingly as a real goddess and not as a deluded modern, no matter how many fantastic things happen because of her. Cupcake factories are invaded, a Bar Mitzvah is deconstructed, PTA meetings end badly, a marriage counselor fails to have her committed. And there is the sex. This was one of the first novels where a female character tells the kind of tales that men had been telling all along about their desires and failures and conquests.
We learn much about true history and myth, what really happened before patriarchy had changed the telling to make all the heroes into men or male gods.… (más)