Fervor

Starred review from January 29, 2024
Lloyd debuts with a gripping and powerful story of a British Jewish family visited by ghosts and divided by politics. While growing up in London in the 1990s, Elsie Rosenthal bonds with her paternal grandfather Yosef, a Holocaust survivor from Warsaw who lives in the attic. She’s 14 when she overhears Yosef on his deathbed telling her journalist mother, Hannah, about his collaboration with the Nazis in exchange for marginally better treatment, and how he continues to be tormented by memories of a nine-year-old orphan boy named Ariel, whom he escorted to the gas chamber at Treblinka. After Yosef dies, Elsie’s father, Eric, defies his wishes to be cremated and gives him a proper Jewish burial. Shortly after the funeral, Elsie goes missing for several days. When the police finally bring her home, she exhibits a haunted demeanor and claims to be able to see dead people including Yosef and Ariel. She develops anorexia and attempts suicide, and her mother accuses her of witchcraft and demonic possession. A parallel narrative follows her younger brother Tovyah at Oxford University in 2008, where he is tormented by classmates who call his mother a “fascist” for publishing a pro-Israel op-ed during bombings of Gaza. Lloyd’s panoply of secular, atheistic, and strictly observant characters set the stage for complex discussions of antisemitism and Zionism and a dramatic spiritual reckoning, as Elise remains haunted by Yosef and his unmet final wishes. Fans of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Stephen King alike will thrill to this superb modern folk tale. Agent: Becky Thomas, Lewinsohn Agency.

February 15, 2024
In Lloyd's unsettling debut, the death of Holocaust survivor and prickly patriarch Yosef sends the members of a strict Jewish family reeling in 1999 London. Fourteen-year-old Elsie, the favorite of her forbidding grandfather, alarms her family and teachers with her behavior after his death. Months later, she goes missing for several days, and when she returns, is emotionally disturbed to the extent that she is eventually institutionalized. Her mother, Hannah, a former journalist now consumed with writing a biography of her father-in-law, withdraws from the lives of her three children. Eight years later, youngest son Tovyah, who has rebelled against his family's orthodoxy, enrolls at Oxford and meets Kate, who becomes wrapped up in Tovyah's life and observes the continuing disintegration of the family and Elsie's increasingly fragile state. While the shifting points of view and timelines in the novel are sometimes handled awkwardly, Lloyd convincingly inserts elements of fantasy and horror into what would otherwise be a realistic novel and raises intriguing questions about faith and the impact of the dead on the living.

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March 1, 2024
When a North London girl returns after several days missing, her family wonders if she's been possessed. Elsie Rosenthal is 13 when her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, dies and she begins getting in trouble in school. When her class is given an assignment "to write a story about a family reunion," Elsie turns in a violent, disturbing piece inspired by the biblical tale of Jephthah's sacrificed daughter. Her devout (and intellectually rigorous, if not merciless) parents are brought in to speak with her teachers, for whom Elsie's mother, Hannah, has just one question: "Was it any good?...Elsie's story. Were you impressed?" Lloyd's extraordinary debut novel traces the implosion of a family--each member both difficult and unique, gifted and troubled. Elsie disappears for several days, and though she returns, she doesn't seem to be the same. Hannah concludes that Elsie has lost herself in an obsession with Kabbalah, or "black magic," but her son, Tovyah, believes Elsie's mental state can be attributed to their dysfunctional family dynamics. Lloyd's narrative picks up about a decade later when Tovyah begins studying at Oxford, and events are filtered through the perspective of a classmate named Kate. In Tovyah's view, his mother has betrayed the family--and capitalized on their suffering--by writing sensationalized memoirs in which she describes both their grandfather's Holocaust experiences and Elsie's breakdowns. But in Lloyd's telling, nothing--from a straightforward accounting of events to an assignment of blame--is simple. In his explorations of religion, family, academia, and the haunting effects of the past, his writing is remarkably nuanced and, at the same time, suffused with suspense. A tremendous debut from a strikingly talented new writer.

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