Gail Carson Levine
A CEILING MADE OF EGGSHELLS
HarperCollins, 2020, ISBN: 978-0062878199
Reviewed by Rochelle Strauss1
“...Jews have lived in Spain for over a thousand years. We’re in Spain and Spain is in us. Sometimes the gentiles behave badly. We wait, and times get better” (p. 7).
These words are told to seven-year-old Paloma by her abuela, Bela, as part of a bedtime story. It is the year 1483, a year which will bring unexpected life-changing events to Paloma and her family, and the onset of a chain of trials for all Spanish Jews. Gail Carson Levine starts her engaging historical novel about this crucial period in Spanish and Jewish history with the grandmother’s story that is meant to comfort her granddaughter, with its predictions of a bright future.
The bedtime stories are always about Paloma, or Loma, and take place in Naples, where abuela’s sister lives. That night’s story is about Loma’s willingness to marry King Solomon if he makes her a ceiling of eggshells. As the historical record bears out, this image serves as a metaphor for how fragile the structure of protection is over their lives in Spain. Many Spanish Jews, like Loma’s grandfather, had risen to wealth and power, and had lent their services to the Spanish monarchs. Belo, as he is known to the family, loosely echoes the life of Don Isaac Abarbanel. Levine’s focus, however, is on the effects of all these unexpected difficulties on a young girl who wants to live the typical life of her predecessors, but is forced to adapt to unanticipated misfortunes.
Echoing the events that Jews such as Don Isaac Abarbanel and his family suffered at that time,2 Levine creates Loma as a first-person narrator whose life in the next nine years is marked by many upheavals. Loma survives the plague that kills Bela and other members of the Spanish community at large. With more deaths in the Christian community fomenting conspiracy theories against the Jews, the violence of the Inquisition increases, climaxing in the Alhambra Decree of 1492. Despite her grandfather’s money and political shrewdness, he and his fellow Jews are forced to convert, leave Spain, or die.
As Loma describes the story of her wealthy Cantala family, living in the judería of Alcalá de Henares, Levine’s narration brings to life for her readers not only the more familiar history of the Inquisition and the expulsion, but also aspects of the daily lives of the Jews at that time, their customs, adventures, happiness, and grief. The threat of death that always accompanied the community at that time is not omitted but recounted within the context of Loma’s understanding of the world.
Loma’s knowledge of the world grows far beyond that of a typical girl because her abuelo, or Belo, in his grief, finds comfort visiting Loma as she recuperates from the plague. He realizes how much she resembles his strong-willed wife, and he takes an interest in her intelligence and facility with numbers. These attributes demonstrate her observational skills and methodical mind. Loma’s fascination with numbers saves her after a kidnapping, because she remembers the number of footsteps, when she was taken, to find her way home. Even at age seven, she is mature enough to sublimate her own wishes to have a normal life when her grandfather chooses her to accompany him on his business travels. Despite her youth, she is thoughtful, clever, and resilient. Loma is now a source of strength as was his deceased wife. Unlike other girls her age, who would rarely leave the home, she journeys widely, appears at the Court of the Spanish monarchs, and participates in the failed attempts to sway the monarchs to rescind their harsh decree.
Using Loma as the narrative voice, Levine enables the reader to experience not only the practical concerns of daily life that inform her point of view as a female in that society, but as Loma takes on more responsibility and learns social skills, she cannot help but become a role model for women of today. She has proven capable beyond her years, yet we empathize with her desire to be like her siblings, who marry and have children. It is a poignant reminder of how she looks to the future with hopefulness rather than despair despite suffering so many setbacks. As Loma travels with Belo, we see how she responds to the challenges and confusion of the larger Christian and Muslim societies that characterize Spain in that time. Her abuela had described her as having many “drawers,” and her interactions with others open many of these “drawers” to her personality. True to the Spanish meaning of her name - Paloma means dove and calls to mind the dove of peace - she abhors discord. She strives to offer sensible advice and solve difficult situations. She has the courage and fortitude to save Belo’s life, evades efforts to convert her, and successfully overcomes the plague and other attacks to her wellbeing. At the conclusion, Loma manages to join her family on a ship bound for Naples, where they hope to find a home, though it is suggested that they find again that ceiling of eggshells.
In the nine year span of the narrative, Paloma changes from the manipulated child and grandchild to an agent of change and resilience, with a strong will to survive. With this novel, Gail Carson Levine demonstrates why she is an avidly-read author for children, teens and adults. She creates memorable characters and relatable stories. Here, she has drawn from the experiences of her Sephardic father and his family as exiles and immigrants to inspire her to write this story of one of the most infamous exiles in Jewish history. She researched a variety of sources, on dress, food, poetry, and history to give a fullness and veracity to her fictional recreation of the drama of that time. The cycle of Jewish history is characterized by the ever-shifting sands of acceptance and rejection, with a swiftness at times in which everyday life is threatened and changed forever. In her creation of Paloma, Levine has fashioned an ancestor we can identify with, for Paloma is a role model of perseverance and survival that serves well for today’s Jews.
1 Rochelle Strauss is a retired librarian, Brooklyn Public Library, New York.
2 See other treatments of this historical period in Sephardic Horizons. The Spanish Plot, by Leah Sokol, reviewed in Sephardic Horizons Volume 10, Issue 1 Winter 2020, deals more directly with 1492 and the life of Don Abarbanel. A review of A Cage Without Bars, by Anne Dublin, appears in Volume 9, Issue 3 Summer 2019.