The Weight of Ink in Around the Year in 52 Books

Aug 02, 2020 Kathryn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 4-stars, 2020-reading-list, qld-bc, aty-2020

I debated whether to give this 4 or 4.5★ but in the end I'm going with 4★.

Despite the fact that it took me almost a month to read this (I got distracted by some new hobbies I picked up!), I did enjoy it. I just found it a bit challenging to read.

Somehow the changes back and forth between London in the 1600s and 2000/2001 left me feeling a bit disoriented, although I'm not exactly sure why. The chapters were generally longish, so I can't say that they changed too suddenly. I think I just keep los ...more

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Jan 01, 2022 Nina rated it liked it

Shelves: 2022-aty

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Some aspects were very appealing to me, e.g., a rebellious young woman struggling to find her voice in a patriarchal society, scholars working to solve an intriguing historical puzzle, mirrored stories told in two different times. That’s all great fun. However, I didn’t particularly like most of the characters (especially Aaron, who is a total weenie), the plot never quite gelled, it took too long to get interesting, and it didn’t go as far as it could ...more

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Feb 06, 2020 Hannah Peterson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aty-2019-2020

The Weight of Ink is an intricate, compelling novel that's attempting a lot: two different time lines; detailed, accurate historical fiction; 17th century theology; a gentle, affectionate satire of the world of academia and archives; love; faith; identity; justice. And to my surprise, it absolutely succeeded.

This book allowed me to have one of my favorite reading experiences: picking up a book that you know nothing about and slowly falling in love with it. A book involving 17th century history The Weight of Ink is an intricate, compelling novel that's attempting a lot: two different time lines; detailed, accurate historical fiction; 17th century theology; a gentle, affectionate satire of the world of academia and archives; love; faith; identity; justice. And to my surprise, it absolutely succeeded.

This book allowed me to have one of my favorite reading experiences: picking up a book that you know nothing about and slowly falling in love with it. A book involving 17th century history and philosophy was always going to be my cup of tea, but The Weight of Ink was immensely fulfilling to me, beyond my expectations. The writing is beautiful, the story vast, multifaceted, and meandering in the best possible way, and the characters, both main and secondary, are deep and dimensional.

No book is perfect, and The Weight of Ink has a few flaws. As I said, I *slowly* fell in love with it - that's because the true heart of the book lies in its historical timeline and the historical timeline is a very slow burn. It took more than a fifth of the way through for me to really start to get into it, and in a novel with over 500 pages...that's just not going to work for everybody. Aaron Levy's story was the weakest to me and I never fully became captivated by his character, the way I did for the others. All of Kadish's characters are nuanced, complicated creatures and none are purely likable, but I just had a hard time being convinced that an arrogant playboy could have his opinions about how to treat women changed by his historical research.

That all being said, what clinched the five star rating for me, besides my serious enjoyment of the last 4/5 of the book, was the sheer amount of careful research and thoughtful attention that Kadish devoted to this work. I was honestly surprised to discover that Kadish has no background in history or philosophy - she explains in an interview in the back of my copy that she sat in on Stanford History classes, traveled to London, consulted with specialists, read and reread Spinoza, learned to write with a quill pen. And the significance for me - that comes through in this book. I may not have agreed with every decision she made, but it's obvious that every word of this novel was carefully chosen and that's something I can seriously respect. ...more

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Jan 07, 2019 Cheri rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, judaism, temp-abandoned

The book seems very well researched and I learned some interesting things about the history of the Jews in England and Portugal, but I kept getting annoyed with the characters. I was also put off because the historian took an incredibly unrealistic approach to her first (and possibly only) three days with a trove of recently discovered documents. I gave up reading 40% through the book, according to my Kindle.

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