Kantika

February 13, 2023
Graver (The End of the Point) delivers a luminous story of a Sephardic family disrupted by wars and antisemitism. Rebecca Cohen has a happy early childhood in Constantinople, where she and her best friend Rahelika “Lika” Nahon thrive at a French-speaking Catholic school. The eruption of WWI, though, interrupts this childhood idyll. The Turkish military takes over the Cohen family’s textile factory, and Rebecca finds work with a local dressmaker to help the family make ends meet. With antisemitism on the rise after the war, the near-destitute Cohens end up in Barcelona, where Rebecca’s father Alberto works as a caretaker in a synagogue. Rebecca dreams of living in the United States, where Lika has immigrated, but feels duty-bound to remain with her family. With her brothers’ encouragement she sets up a dressmaking business, which flourishes only when she hides her Jewish identity. Years later, after Rebecca has two children and becomes a widow, Lika dies in childbirth and her widower asks Rebecca to marry him, forcing her to make a series of difficult decisions and compromises. With elegant prose, Graver offers a memorable portrait of a self-reliant woman tied to faith and traditions. Fans of family epics will love this. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson, & Lerner. (Apr.)Correction: A previous version of this review misstated how many children the character Rebecca had. It also mischaracterized the type of work the character Alberto did at a synagogue.