As time travel is a fairly common theme in fiction, the attraction of a work lies in the creative execution of the idea. The Ninth Day presents a sweeping time travel story, spanning the period of the ravaged Berkeley college campus in 1964 backward in time to the city of Paris in the year 1099. The story is told from the point of view of a half-Jewish, half-Danish girl whose father is a professor of physics at Berkeley and whose mother is a Judaica gift store owner who frequently travels to Israel to purchase unique souvenirs for her shop. Sixteen-year-old Hope also goes by the name Tikva, which is the literal translation into Hebrew of her English name. Her family is raising her in the Jewish faith. Hope stutters and is shy and socially awkward but she is a gifted singer and singing is a way to express herself when spoken words and sentences fail her. Her family is troubled and it is her grandfather who is her closest friend and ally.
The story takes place during Hanukkah simultaneously in Berkeley and Paris. Through the agency of time travel, with a charmed prayer shawl given to Hope by her grandmother and a time traveling messenger named Serakh, Hope saves the life of a newborn baby boy a thousand years earlier in Paris. Lessons she has learned from her Berkeley life with its drug-related issues of the ‘60s make her uniquely suited to perform this task despite her many fears, doubts and lack of self-confidence.
The book’s structure is interesting with the ninth day of the title referring to both the preceding eight days of Hanukkah and to the eight days between the birth of a baby boy and his brit milah.
This fascinating story, filled with history and science, seems well researched and the author’s treatment of the characters’ interrelationships is ingenious and impressive. The characters are believable and the reader is moved to both tears and laughter. The book is ambitious; perhaps, too much so. In an attempt to cover a huge amount of ground, some of the interesting features may be lost within the layers upon layers of narrative. Nevertheless, this densely plotted, intriguing, well-written novel is a wonderful read and is recommended for ages 10 – 14.
