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Lovingkindness (Magill Book Reviews)

The novel focuses on the relationship between Annie Johnson, a feminist writer and teacher, and her daughter, Andrea, who as the story begins has just decided to live as part of an Orthodox religious community in Israel. Annie is accustomed to getting desperate letters and phone calls from Andrea, and for years has helped her (although not altogether approvingly) through a continuing series of troubles (abortions, a suicide attempt) and phases (punk hairdos, tattoos). She is unprepared, though, to find that Andrea now is thoroughly immersed in a culture that demands humble obedience to God and the rabbis, diligent spiritual study, and almost complete self-denial, to the extent that even a marriage is arranged for her so that she can serve God by bearing children.

Annie especially resents her daughter’s new life-style because it not only excludes her but also directly repudiates the feminist values on which she has centered her life. Even as she plots one more time to interfere and drag Andrea back to the modern world, however, Annie begins to analyze her own motives and beliefs and gains a new perspective on exactly what life in the modern world entails. Instead of joining with the parents of the intended husband of the arranged marriage to kidnap the couple from what seems like a strange cult, Annie finds her visit to Israel culminating in a deeper knowledge of and respect for her daughter’s needs and desires, which are so unlike her own.

Alongside traditional narration, Roiphe uses letters, continuous flashbacks, and a series of dreams to trace Annie’s responses and progressive understanding of not only her daughter’s dilemma but her own as well. What appears to be her personal failure with her daughter is in fact a symptom of a broader cultural problem. Feminism, for example, one of Roiphe’s recurrent themes, runs the risk of failure if it turns shrill or underestimates the real challenges it poses to human relations.

The novel is thus philosophical and meditative, but it is also deeply emotional, and Roiphe very skillfully dramatizes as well as analyzes the achievement of the “lovingkindness” that serves as her title. This term is first used ironically, and the lovingkindness of God and mothers such as Annie proves to be somewhat harsh. By the end, though, without relinquishing either her feminism or her high hopes for her daughter and future generations, Annie envisions and enacts a love that is kind.