The Golems of Gotham
Thane Rosenbaum, 2002
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060959456
Summary
Part ghost story, part haunting fable inspired by Jewish mysticism and folklore, The Golems of Gotham tells the story of Oliver Levin, a bestselling gothic mystery writer and his teenage daughter, Ariel, who suddenly emerges as a precocious klezmer violinist and amateur kabbalist. Ariel tries to bring her father out of writer's block by summoning the spirit of his dead parents, both Holocaust survivors and suicide victims.
On the surface it is a story about a daughter's longing to rescue her father. But on another level, The Golems of Gotham is a wildly imaginative exploration of how the Holocaust became part of our shared consciousness, and what will happen once it retreats from the center of our collective memory.
By invoking the ancient legend of the Golem, the novel pays tribute to the way imagination is used in the spirit of repair. It also contemplates the price that artists pay when they look too deeply into the heart of atrocity, illuminating how the mind conjures both its own prison, and liberation. (From the publisher.)