Review of The Children's House by Alice Nelson

The Children’s House by Alice Nelson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading The Children's House . A little slow at first, but as one reviewer has stated the text is often meandering and meditative. Once the story got going about the nurturing aspect of "the children's house" on an Israeli kibbutz, themes of love, comfort and Marina's childlessness and her motivation emerged. The association of Marina with the little refugee boy Gabriel, esp. her love for him was heartfelt and appeared to evoke a personal aspect / history. I was drawn into interesting characters such as Constance and wanted to know more about a possible trauma [although imagined], the elderly nun Vera, her part in the chapters with Constance and Gabriel esp. her perspective on what mattered at the convent. I found Jacob to be that typical CIS white male who acts accordingly, exhibiting a dominant post-colonial fear and also unable to place himself in the shoes of his barren wife. While this book was more character driven, the shifting timeline was interesting and certain historical events not well-known personally such as the scarring of Holocaust survivors, the genocide in Rwanda, its aftermath and the effect on families. As Peter Carey once stated, 'No one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody knows!'
Alice Nelson's prose is florid and poetic, her descriptions in the early part of the novel are worth repeating here.
Page 17: 'The world was offering her the figure of a mother at a time when she thought she had stopped looking behind her for what had been lost.'
Page 25: 'How can they survive this white time with no leaf on any tree, and the cold so strong that even one small square of bare skin can send it deep into you?'

View all my reviews