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In The King's Arms: A Novel (2011)

by Sonia Taitz(Favorite Author)

3.41 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0975561863 (ISBN13: 9780975561867)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

McWitty Press

review 1: "In the King's Arms" by Sonia Taitz would seem to be the perfect book for me. It has received excellent reviews as a literary novel. Its setting in Oxford appeals to the anglophile in me, as does the premise of an American girl who is a fish-out-of-water in the storied English university. But as the book progressed, I couldn't help re-writing it in my head. So many opportunities for story-telling are left fallow and the characters become more absurd as the story goes on. This summary contains spoilers. Lily Taub, our protagonist, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, leaves her home in New York to study in Oxford. There are a few scenes that set up her sense of isolation as one of the few Americans in the city. She is treated with rudeness and indifference b... morey most students she meets until she encounters Peter, a quirky student, in a pub. Peter takes Lily under his wing, and through him she meets his brother Julian, who immediately captures Lily's heart. Julian is not a student because he did not qualify for university. Peter invites Lily to spend the Christmas holidays with his family in Gloucestershire. His mother Helena has remarried a staunchly conservative businessman named Archibald and they have a three-year-old son named Timothy. Lily seems pretty clueless on how to be a good house guest. She is obsessed with thinking about the differences between Christianity and Judaism and completely misunderstands the nature of the Anglican approach to Christmas. She offends the family when she takes Communion at the Christmas service. The Kendall family's anti-semitism comes to the fore, and when Lily is left to babysit Timothy while the rest of the family goes to a long-planned New Year's Eve ball, a minor disaster occurs. Lily is unceremoniously sent back to Oxford where she has nowhere to stay--the college rooms are being used by people attending a physics conference. Lily finds refuge in the home of Mrs. Dancer, a cleaner at the college. Mrs. Dancer is the most believable character in the whole book. Lily falls into a languor. She doesn't attend classes or tutorials. When she decides she is pregnant (no doctor visit), the options of what to do seem to overwhelm her. She decides to go home to New York, takes her trunk to be shipped, and then stays. Peter gets the lead in an OUDS (Oxford University Drama Society) production and Lily attends the last performance. Julian is also there and decides to get blind drunk after glimpsing Lily in the audience. Lily sees Julian drunk and decides that this is farewell. Julian's family learns there is a baby coming and invites Lily to move back into their home. Julian goes to Dublin to interview with the legendary Abbey Theatre and is offered a position in the company. Now that he has prospects, he and Lily get back together. Where to start with this disappointing novel. There are no descriptions of life in Oxford, no explanation of the system of colleges that make up Oxford, no sense of university life. This book could have been set at any generic English institution. Having spent just a few days in Oxford myself, I felt the total lack of descriptive setting. So if the author doesn't want to give us a setting, she should provide either plot or character. In these two areas I also felt things were missing. The plot is barely developed. A girl meets a boy, has sex, gets pregnant, drops out of school. There is no urgency or sense of tension. So that leaves character revealed by dialog and interior monologue. Ms. Taitz has written plays, so the dialog should shine. But instead we are given conversations between characters that have no spark of life and I cannot imagine any living person delivering. Many conversations border on the absurd. Lily is prone to interior monologues heavy with Jewish theology, not what you would expect of a 21-year-old American. I did like the interspersed chapters about Lily's parents experience during World War II. These gave far greater insight into their lives, and the effect on Lily's, than anything else in the book. I will add one more criticism. The presentation of what it might be like to be an actor at Oxford, and an actor in general, is ridiculous. It trivializes the actor's craft and experience, implying that it is easy to get a lead part in an OUDS production (Julian gets cast as Caliban in "The Tempest" even though he is not a student, and he is so brilliant that is astounds people--it is the first time he has acted). Julian is hired by a famous theatre company without any experience and is able to support his fledgling family. All this is presented as probable because his dilettante father is an actor. The rapturous praise for this novel lured me to read it, and I kept hoping that I would find what other readers saw in it. I am sorry to report that I did not. There are moments of luminous prose, but not enough to recommend it.
review 2: In the King's Arms by Sonia Taitz is an extraordinary book which combines the world of the heroine's parent's, survivors of the Holocaust, with Lily's life as an overschieving "outsider" invited to attend Oxford university. When she falls in love with the black sheep son of an aristocratic family--her worlds collide. She has to deal with his antisemitic family and find the faith to accept that love can bridge worlds and make a future that includes both. A literary novel with romance and ironic realism. Lily is an everywoman,a hard worker with talent, who has to deal with the entitled and hold onto her sense of values. And yet this is a light easy read. less

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