The Way Back by Gavriel Savit

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Way Back by Gavriel Savit Fiona Hartley-Kroeger Savit, Gavriel The Way Back. Knopf, 2020 [368p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781984894625 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781984894649 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 7-10 In the shtetl of Tupik, somewhere in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, encounters with the Angel of Death intertwine the lives of two children: the angry, sharp-eyed, fatherless boy Yehuda Leib and Bluma the baker's daughter. Their journeys take them through the Far Country, a land ruled and inhabited by demons, and into the stronghold of Death itself. As they bargain with demons and learn to navigate through the Far Country, where "the direction matters less than you think," each must, in their own way, come to terms with the face Death wears for them or risk ceasing to live. Savit (Anna and the Swallow Man, BCCB 2/16) builds the action with a storyteller's assured cadences, creating a story rich in elements of Jewish folk tradition and flashes of both humor and the grotesque. Yehuda Leib's and Bluma's inner and outer lives are rendered with great warmth, making them sympathetic yet unsentimental, heroic yet human. The story emphasizes several familiar ideas central to children's literature: that change is the province of the living; that death is part of life; that we go through both alone and not alone. The novel will appeal enormously to fans of Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (BCCB 10/08), and while it's appropriate for middle school readers, its folkloric tone and themes give it considerable crossover appeal for high schoolers as well. [End Page 49] Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois