Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard by Deborah Rey

As I mentioned in my previous post, I came across Deborah Rey’s website through a comment she left on one of my posts. She has a book out in April, Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard. The first chapter is available for download on Deborah’s website.

One day, Rachel, who lives in France, gets a phone call from her foster sister Sophie that her mother has died. Rachel and her husband Jonathan drive “up north” for the funeral. The first chapter, written from Rachel’s perspective, describes the funeral and has a few flashbacks to the time immediately before the funeral from the moment she heard about her mother’s death.

Soon it becomes apparent that something happened in the past between Rachel and her mom and that she had an immensely trouble relationship with her mother:

[...]we started on our long drive up north. We talked much along the way, because there was so much to say. Mother, Papa, the past, the lies, the secret, and the silence.

We drove in silence for hours, because many feelings hadn’t shaped into words yet. Mother, death, the past, the war, the lies, the hatred, the secret,and the silence.

A deluge of incomprehensible emotions and painful and threatening waves of grief and bereavement came over me. I didn’t understand. Why cry? I didn’t even love her. Why cry then? Because I never managed to really hate her?

Something happened in the past which turned Rachel in the black sheep of the family and caused a rift between her and the people around her. She is shunned by the other people at the funeral:

I am sure that in some cases, it comforts the family to see how many have come to share their grief. Yeah, in some cases it probably does, but not in this one, bloody hell, not in this one. These people don’t share any grief. Oh, no. They only share hatred for their dead friend’s wicked daughter, and that’s-a-me.

[...]

Oh, yes, she was a special little woman, a very special little woman, but if truth be told… You, Lisa, my best friend from kindergarten through High School, you’d be sorry you believed the filthy lies she told about me and you’d maybe even be sorry you dropped me for her. Well, I think you should be.

And you, Doc, you pathetic, old fart. You’ve know me all my life and now you feel guilty, because you believed her and judged me and, most important, never spoke up? Good. Good. You don’t know what to say? So, shut up, Doc. Like you did in the past.

Oh hell, if truth be told. You, dear neighbour, who spat me in the face and you, his darling wife, who cowardly hid behind vicious, mud-slinging and – needless to say – anonymous letters… it is fun to think how shocked you two would be, if ever you found out she took you for a ride, and she sure did, you poor sods.

If ever the truth were known about my oh-so-special Monster Mother, all of you would regret not being, or having remained close to a friend, a brother, a sister. You’d understand and most likely resent feeling so desperately alone with the memories of this little lady, who made us all dance to the rhythm of her song. Like puppets on a string.

The blurb about the book on Deborah Rey’s website tells us more:

Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard and Anne Frank’s diary have several things in common: World War Two, the Nazis, the Holocaust and the wish to survive. Yet, where Anne was forced to passively hide and depended on righteous people to survive, young Rachel Sarai was actively involved as a ‘baby-courier’ in her country’s Underground Resistance. Equally important, she was responsible for guarding the hiding place in her parents’ house which sheltered many people in peril during the last years of war.

Jewish, but very blond and thus inconspicuous, Rachel Sarai was nearly five when she began to distribute messages, and – during nightly curfew hours – smuggle people across the moors to a safe address. She learned to lie, steal and murder and face up to the Germans, especially the Gestapo. She was seven when the British and Canadians liberated the country.

Besides WWII, Rachel Sarai survived the murderous hatred and mental and physical abuse of her father’s wife who maintained to be her mother. A mother who surprised the child with the spectacle of her father and another woman fornicating and eight weeks later forced her to watch the knitting needle abortion performed on the same woman. A mother who smiled when she realised Rachel had been raped by a young neighbour and didn’t care whether she lived or died. Also the mother who, just when it looked as if the war would not last forever, betrayed Marie, the one person who truly loved the little girl during the first seven years of her life.

Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard relates the author’s life, from the time she was born up to the last time she meets with the monster mother. It’s about war and fear and lost morals. It’s about the death of the child within, the cruel annihilation of a child’s roots and the vengefully kept secret of her true parentage.

Five years after their last meeting the old woman dies. Rachel Sarai and her husband Jonathan come over from France to organize the cremation and, during the funerary ceremony, Rachel is once again confronted with the cesspool of her life.

I think I would like to read Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard once it is published, but I am also apprehensive: will I be able to handle the subject, the abuse? Reading the fiction on her website and the chapter, I think I have a feel for Deborah Rey’s writing style, which is rather direct, not shying away from what needs to be said, but at the same time leaving things unsaid. I liked her writing. The writing in the book seems to be more polished, but both the book and the short fiction stuck with me, I couldn’t immediately “store this reading away in it’s designated place”, I had to ponder and think it over. I think this is in large part due to the writing style. For me it worked, but I can also see that writing style and subject matter might not work for everyone. Eventually though, I do think I’d want to read Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard, not just because I got along well with Deborah Rey’s writing, but also because I am now curious how Rachel will fare dealing with her past, her mother’s death and in her healing process.