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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Benjamin Abravenel’s The Past, Again, Judah Cohen is a Santa Barbara boy whose childhood changes after he finds Holocaust photographs in his father Brian’s study and begins answering to James instead of his given name. As James grows older, he sets his sights on Montecito, where architecture and wealth seem to offer an escape from the crowded Jewish house he wants to leave. His mother, Lori, has a private past from Iraq and Israel that James barely knows, while Chase Ravenscroft’s family hides its own reinvention behind a polished estate. When Judith, James’s younger sister, explains Yom HaShoah to her German American friend Ashley, a neighborhood misunderstanding becomes public. The Cohen family is pulled into a storm that brings old fears into modern California.
Benjamin Abravenel’s The Past, Again is a gorgeous novel, full of both heartening and heartbreaking moments. The author brings generational trauma to the forefront in a skilled display of an inheritance that boils inside a home long after the senior Cohens tell themselves they have left it behind. Abravenel writes about Jewish family life with intimate familiarity, making Brian’s scholarship on the Zohar and Lori’s music feel organic. The writing is at its best when divulging private history, which ultimately becomes public. Lori’s interview about her Iraqi Jewish childhood is beautifully handled because it changes her from a protective mother into someone finally speaking for Sairah’s losses. I genuinely felt sympathy for James, whose ambition toward Montecito exists beside his loyalty to Judith. Elegantly written and immersive, this book is a smart choice for readers who adore literary fiction. Very highly recommended.
