The Only Daughter by A.B. Yehoshua is a coming of age story of the best kind. The narrator is a young girl who struggles with faith and finding herself in Padua, Italy. The language is witty and nuanced. Highly recommended. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

3.5 rounded up for the unique Jewish experience it brought.

Overall I enjoyed this book. It captures a slice of life for an interfaith Jewish family in northern Italy in the 1990s. I really appreciate how it captures the Jewish experience post-WWII via the adults in our 12 year old protagonist Rachele’s life, but she is mostly concerned with her father’s brain tumor and upcoming bat mitzvah.

Rachele is a very privileged girl, as her grandfather and father are both lawyers. They have servants and drivers and her grandmother lives in a huge mansion in Venice. They do face antisemitism, mostly in passing, but overall the family lives a good life in Italy, despite the constantly presence of Catholicism, and I really enjoyed reading about how Jews took care to preserve their culture in such a Catholic place. Rachele is learning Hebrew for her bat mitzvah and takes pride in telling everyone she meets.

We also see Rachele learn from her grandmother and teacher how to stay strong when dealing with her father’s illness. Overall, it’s a nice coming of age story.

My only gripe is that the author felt the need to describe the body of a 12 year old child in intimate detail in one scene. I found this disturbing and unnecessary for an otherwise well done novel.

The tenderness, influence, and strife within the Lazzatto family, and community was genuinely moving. The personal family issues and history between the Jews and non-Jews encapsulated both the promises and perils of humanity.

Rachele Luzzatto is Jewish. She’s the only daughter of a Jewish family in northern Italy. At twelve years of age, preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, is a ‘given’ — but at the moment the Bat Mitzvah is not the only thing pressing on her mind.
She wanted to be in a school play. She got a great leading part — but because the play would be held inside a church (nothing religious about the event), Rachele’s father flatly refused.
At the same time — Rachel learns her father is seriously sick. He has a brain tumor.

The book itself is short — (I suppose it could be classified as a novella) — so I’m being careful not to give many details away….
but Rachele is a spunky-bright-curious-young girl.
She has a full range of interests. She rather be a judge than a lawyer like her father when she grows up — or heck maybe work with fish—or ‘whatever’. She’s twelve — she can change her mind many times.

Rachele’s Jewish grandfather is larger-than-life irresistible and charismatic. He told her story about the way he survived the Holocaust—(he became a Priest), that he was sure his son, Rachel’s dad, did not want her to know.
The story was helpful to Rachel—but also added complexity —as Rachele was grappling with her own religious identity—her desires, loneliness, her father’s morality, her fear, worry, and grief that her father was sick…..
and weighing in values that she learns from her maternal Catholic grandparents —and even a teacher at her school — (who believed she might find solace in a nineteenth-century novel).

“The Only Daughter”, (with its collective colorful supporting characters)….is a novel to admire and adore….for its ‘coming-of-age’ character study of young Rachele Luzzatto.

And now some sad news….news I just learned.
A.B. Yehoshua died last month - in June 2022. He was 85.
He was an outspoken critic for both Israeli and Palestinian policies. He continued to speak out and search of solutions to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

He wrote 12 models, I got to know sure stories, and several plays and volumes of essays. He win prizes worldwide at his work has been translated into 28 languages and adapted for found an opera.

David Grossman, another Israeli author (one of my favorite authors), wrote a beautiful article about HIS FRIEND…. A.B. Yehoshua (Buli) …..
It can be found on LIT HUB

A few things David Grossman said about his friend:
“He was able to show us how ‘grand’ history seeps into the soul of the individual, at times bursting forth from within”.

David wrote about when he first met *Buli*.
David was a twenty-something novice writer.
David said….
“His seniority and status were completely irrelevant to the conversation. What are you the wondrous force that moved and attracted us both—the writing, the work, the inspiration”.

By the end of the ‘full’ article — I felt so moved my eyes were watering.

Beautiful LAST book from Yehoshua…..beautiful man!!!