"In The Book of Faith, Elaine Kalman Naves is as wise about 21st century synagogue intrigues and middle-age romances as Jane Austen was about early 19th century English drawing rooms. In fact, if Austen were around today—and Jewish, of course—I’m betting this is the kind of novel she’d be writing. Kalman Naves’s story of love and loss, female friendship and hard-earned resilience is fast-paced, heartfelt and sharply observant. The Book of Faith is a serious delight."
- Joel Yanofsky
author of Bad Animals and Mordecai & Me
"The Book of Faith is an incisive, funny, and moving exploration of the lives of three women – one of them the eponymous Faith – over the course of a tumultuous year and a half of challenges both personal and public. Conveying the particulars of Jewish Montreal with an almost documentary realism, it will speak powerfully to anyone who has tried to integrate their own ethnic and religious heritage into contemporary society."
- Susan Glickman
author of The Tale-Teller and Safe as Houses
"Jane Austen and Mordecai Richler are not names that suggest an immediate association. But they are the antecedents that the publisher of Elaine Kalman Naves's debut novel invokes to describe the story of three women--known as the Three Graces--who worship at the same Montreal synagogue. Naves, a former literary columnist for the Montreal Gazette, examines friendship among women in the context of faith and religious politics.The documentary-like dissection of contemporary women's lives recalls Austen; the scabrous humour and contemporary Montreal setting suggest Richler."
– Quill & Quire, October 2015.
Interview in Montreal Review of Books by Sarah Fletcher
Read the article
Interview in Montreal Gazette by Ian McGillis
Read the full article and watch the interview
"Novel of Jewish Montreal hits notes of humour and pathos"
Read the full article
Interview in Canadian Jewish News by Janice Arnold, Staff Reporter
"Smart yet tender, funny yet deep, The Book of Faith, is a sly, witty send-up of squabble-filled synagogue politics ...". Read the full article
Review in The Lilith Blog by Yona Zeldis McDonough
"This history has it all: desire and illicit sex, privilege and penury, fame and infamy, the dramatic momentum of an absorbing novel. ... Kalman Naves have a novelist's eye and a historian's sleuth-like instincts, with the tenacity of both. "Read the whole article here.
- Ami Sands Brodoff
Montreal Review of Books, Spring, 2014
"The chapters dealing with the actual trial… read like a John Grisham legal thriller."
- Stuart Nulman
Montreal Times, March 1, 2014
"A fascinating account of a little-known abortion trial that took place in 19th century Montreal involving prominent members of the local Scottish community, including one Robert Notman, brother of William, the well-know photographer." Read the whole article here.
- Shelley Pomerance
montréal centre_ville, Spring 2014
"Portrait of a Scandal has the air, build-up and tension of a courtroom procedural as historian Elaine Kalman Naves skillfully leads us through the abortion trial of Robert Notman, brother and trusted associate of the great photographer, William Notman. At a time when desperate North American women turned to abortion to end unwanted pregnancies, the judge made Robert’s trial a showcase for his personal vendetta against “this germ of destruction, this moral epidemic” rotting society. In Kalman Naves’ capable hands, Notman’s story is a spellbinding glimpse into the intimate lives of privileged Montrealers, illustrated by stunning photographs of all the principal characters, including Notman’s flamboyant defence lawyer and his nemesis, the plodding but determined prosecutor, and even the doctor who committed suicide [over the case].”
- Elizabeth Abbott
He came to Montreal at the age of 30 in 1856, never having worked as a professional photographer. What brought William Notman to the New World? How and why did he reinvent himself? To listen to the documentary, click here.
ABOUT ME
As a child in Budapest, I loved books. My parents read me picture books and chapter books, and I graduated quickly to reading on my own. When I was nine, we left Hungary in the wake of the Revolution of 1956 and lived in England, before coming to Canada. In a small town near London, I learned English as much at the local library as in the school yard. This little library had an extensive children’s section, and my homesickness was allayed by the joy I found in the books I discovered there. Many years later I wrote of the experience in Shoshanna’s Story: “Suddenly there were all these alternative lives to be discovered: on the floor-to-ceiling shelves, in books of every size and colour, were children who rode horses, studied acting, engaged in swordplay. Children who lived centuries ago, who served as pages for King Arthur, or crossed the Rubicon with Caesar. … I lived to read. I read Heidi and A Dream of Sadler’s Wells in a single week, and as my speed and understanding improved, I reread them in single sittings. Suddenly and strangely, I was ecstatically happy. It was like falling in love.”
For many writers it’s a natural progression from being a bookworm to wanting to write, but this wasn’t so for me. I remember thinking in my teens that it would be an interesting thing to be a writer, if only you had something worthwhile to write about or say. But I had no such subject or urge, until, out of the blue, some twenty years later I found myself badly wanting to tell a particular story.
After many false starts and setbacks, this became the family biography Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family. When Journey to Vaja didn’t find a ready home (it was rejected 67 times, including by McGill-Queen’s University Press, which eventually did publish it), I began writing book reviews and--through a back door--became a literary journalist. In short order I got my own column at the Montreal Gazette, and my first published book became a set of author profiles called The Writers of Montreal. (Eventually Journey to Vaja won a literary prize, was adapted for radio, and was made into the documentary film Paradise Lost, for the Canadian History Channel.)
Both Journey to Vaja and its sequel Shoshanna’s Story: A Mother, A Daughter, and the Shadows of History are partially set against the backdrop of the Holocaust and have won prizes for Holocaust literature. Yet I hadn’t intended to write about the Holocaust at all (actually I was originally foolish enough to think that I could avoid the subject completely). What I was trying to do was find the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and half-sister, whose faces surrounded me in photographs as I was growing up and about whom my parents spun tales from my youngest years. I yearned to know these people and to bring them to life on the page.
I am always a little non-plussed when critics commend me on my honesty. Isn’t the unvarnished truth the most powerful testament? Why idealize my ancestors because they came to a terrible end? They were human beings with warts and foibles, not saints, and I needed to know them as they really were. First and foremost for myself, but also for my readers.
Understanding the motivation of flesh and blood human beings continues to be part of what propels me forward as a writer. Most writers need day jobs alongside their writing careers, and I am no different. In addition to teaching creative writing, I lecture widely, mentor fledgling writers, and edit works in progress. I take pride not only in what goes beneath my by-line, but also in all the other varied aspects of what I do for a living.
About the private me: I have two grown daughters and four grandchildren who—collectively--are the apple of my eye. I live on a quiet dead-end street in west end Montreal with my husband, the love of my life, author and photographer, Archie Fineberg. From the first green shoots that break through April’s reluctant thaw, to the last leaf that drifts from my backyard maples, I tend--and am tended by--my modest urban Eden.
“In university I studied history and developed a great interest in the impact of huge historical events on the lives of ordinary people. This particular theme inhabits not only my family books Journey to Vaja, and Shoshanna’s Story, but also Putting Down Roots: Montreal’s Immigrant Writers, winner of a Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction. The epigraph to this book comes from the Canadian novelist Wayson Choy: ‘All the most interesting things happening today occur at the intersection of cultures.’ Questions of culture and identity—religious, ethnic, racial, and national—continue to fascinate me, whether I’m writing about my own family or exploring a broader canvas.”
--Elaine Kalman Naves
Lecturing and Teaching
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Elaine is in demand as a workshop leader, writing mentor, and lecturer on topics related to her books and her journalism. Over the course of the past twenty years she has led student writing workshops from the elementary level right through university. She continues to conduct workshops in Creative Non-Fiction and Memoir Writing at the Quebec Writers’ Federation, where she has taught since 1998. She also mentors emerging writers both through the scholarship program of the QWF and privately. Elaine studied history at McGill University, and education at Bishop’s University. She began her career as a high-school teacher of English and History, and then worked as a professional historian at the Centre d’Étude du Québec of Sir George Williams University (now Concordia). Among the venues where Elaine has lectured are:
Among the topics on which Elaine lectures
If you would like to book Elaine for a talk, click here and fill out the form.
In 2014-2015 Elaine will be presenting the following titles at book clubs:
If you would like to book Elaine for a presentation, click here and fill out the form. |
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Thank you so much for sending me a copy of Storied Streets. It is a splendid volume -- text, layout, selection of photographs, research -- tout. Would you be kind enough to pass on my congratulations to Bryan Demchinsky and Elaine Kalman Naves? Not they need them.
-Mavis Gallant, personal letter. click to see the original letter.
Since 1985, Elaine has contributed over 400 pieces in a variety of periodicals and scholarly works, Canadian and international, including the Montreal Gazette, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun, Jerusalem Post, Saturday Night, Queen's Quarterly, Books in Canada, Quill & Quire, Poets & Writers, Lilith, Contemporary Literary Criticism, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature (Rev. ed), Canadian Children's Literature, Canadian Author, Prairie Fire, Matrix, Canadian Living, Homemaker's, Viewpoints, McGill News, Canadian Jewish News, Múlt és Jövö [Past and Future] (Budapest), Szombat [Sabbath](Budapest), etc.
Articles/Essays/Fiction
Interviews/Reviews
Source: RadioCanada.ca
Radio Documentaries
Welcome to the website of Montreal writer, journalist, editor, and lecturer Elaine Kalman Naves. Elaine was born in Hungary, and grew up in Budapest, London, and Montreal. For many years she was literary columnist for the Montreal Gazette, and is the author of eight books. Among them are the award-winning memoirs Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family and Shoshanna's Story: A Mother, A Daughter, and the Shadows of History. Elaine's other books include: The Writers of Montreal; Putting Down Roots: Montreal's Immigrant Writers; Storied Streets: Montreal in the Literary Imagination (co-written with Bryan Demchinsky); and Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature. Elaine has contributed frequently to CBC Radio's Ideas, where her most recent project was about the great 19th-century Montreal photographer, William Notman. Her 2013 book, Portrait of a Scandal: The Abortion Trial of Robert Notman, shed light on a secret page in Canadian history. The Book of Faith, Elaine’s first novel, was nominated for the 2016 Leacock Prize for Humour. Elaine's other honours include a Canadian Literary Award for Personal Essay, two Quebec Writers' Federation prizes for non-fiction, and two Jewish Book Awards for Holocaust Literature.
Elaine has led workshops in creative writing at the Quebec Writers’ Federation since their inception in 1998, and mentors emerging writers both through the QWF mentorship program and privately. Her workshop students at the QWF have included authors of critically acclaimed works, among them Susan Pinker, Susan Doherty, Lise Weil, and Janet Torge. Two of her private students – Rosalind Pepall and Dr. Judy Stone – recently published books – Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator, and Resilience: One Family's Story of Hope and Triumph over Evil – that they originally developed with Elaine.
I want you to know how much I loved Shoshanna's Story.
-Alice Munro, personal letter, June 25, 2006, Read the whole letter
“In this compelling account of the bond between a mother and daughter, Elaine Kalman Naves explores the constituents of identity – language, religion, culture. Yet what emerges most powerfully in Shoshanna’s Story is the shimmering complexity of family love, its weae of devotion and resentment, grief and pride, an the case of this remarkable family, a truly astounding and exemplary courage.”
-Janice Kulyk Keefer
“In a world where the numbers of refugees and immigrants increase daily, Elaine Kalman Naves has managed to convey the utter terror and helplessness so many of them experience. Through her portrayal of her family she has created a history of all who came here burdened with the unbearable stories of survivors…. Her new book … is a braided story that weaves back and forth from 19th-century Sub-Carpathia to modern Montreal, with the dramatic tension and suspense of a great novel. … The treachery of love, war, and the innocence of childish idealism are evoked by a master raconteur. The Hungarian revolution is told from the point of view of the child, who remembers being bathed with icy water between artillery attacks….
“This true story is beyond fiction and greater than mere biography. Kalman Naves has given us an epic, rich in historical scope and people with fascinating characters…. Kalman Naves has rewarded us with a truly complex and courageous heroine…. Shoshanna is a survivor, a warrior and a mother.”
-Anna Fuerstenberg, Montreal Gazette, September 6, 2003
“A thoughtful and fascinating exploration of how people survive the seemingly unsurvivable and go on to forge new lives.”
-Nancy Richler, Globe and Mail, October 25, 2003
“A family history with universal resonance.”
-Edmonton Journal
In her absorbing family memoir, Elaine Kalman Naves explores the complex territory of the mother-daughter relationship. The story, partly set in Hungary against the tumult leading up to the Second World War, follows into exile a Jewish family that has miraculously survived the Holocaust.
Elizabeth Johnston, Montreal Review of Books, Fall and Winter 2003-2004, Read the whole review
"A family history that is meticulously researched, rich in personal detail and an unusual resource for those seeking to build a bridge over the Holocaust between the world of pre-war European Jewry and contemporary Jewish life."
-Helen Eptsein, authour of Children of the Holocaust
"Occupying a unique place between autobiography and fiction, Journey to Vaja is a haunting evocation of a world of the past and its presence in the present. It transcends time and place, moves back through centuries, and even transcends its own particular family to talk about the trials and pains of families, of people, of generations. It is a book about a daughter's love of her father and family and her ability to explore the past in order to understand the present."
-David Staines, Department of English, University of Ottawa
"Nowhere is the moral and political potential of the memoir form so well realized as in Elaine Kalman Naves's Journey to Vaja, in which she combines her personal memories of growing up the daughter of a holocaust survivor with the actual letters of her 'shadow family,' all of whom died in the wake of the last evil effort of the Nazi regime to destroy as many Jewish families as it could in the course of its own death throes. Naves's journey through her family's letters, more than any of the many fictionalized accounts I have seen or read of the holocaust, brought home to me the terrible individual suffering, compounded over millions of lives in a host of families, that has occurred in our times."
-Helen M. Buss, Prairie Fire
"A touching story of Naves's family history from the 1780s to our times. She travels through the emotional, historical-geographical terrain of two centuries, meticulously recording events and introducing family members, acquaintances, and the milieu of Hungary's historical times."
-George Gabori, author of When Evils Were Most Free
"A personal account of a kind that one encounters but rarely, this evocative story is told in remarkable detail and with empathy combined with a reassuring degree of objectivity. It complements usefully and poignantly the still-growing scholarly literature on the history of Jews in Hungary."
Istvan Anhalt, Emeritus Professor, Music Department, Queen's University
“a dynastic tale structured like a triple-decker generational novel…, a loving tribute to a courageous family.”
Richard Teleky, The Toronto Star
“The child of Hungarian Holocaust survivors who was herself born in Hungary, Naves combines the genres of autobiography, biography, fiction [and] history to describe two centuries of her Hungarian-Jewish family’s history. Through careful research, Naves manages to bridge the Holocaust gulf to better times, so that today I am able to read … not only how Jews died, but how they lived. … She also displays a courageous honesty in revealing some of the less attractive family history, a thing people are sometimes reluctant to do when writing about victims of terrible crimes. Yet this only adds to the strength and credibility of her story. Eloquent…. Beautifully and heartrendingly written.”
Libby Scheier, The Montreal Gazette
“a remarkable portrayal of daily life in pre-war Hungary [written] with the thorough research of an academic historian and the craft of a novelist.”
Greg McGillis, Ottawa Citizen
“Journey to Vaja reminds us of the haunting words of Nobel Prize winner I.B. Singer, the Yiddish writer who said ‘I write in the language of ghosts.’ Through her meticulous research, Kalman Naves has added to our cultural memory and animated a lost world.”
Maureen Moore, Vancouver Sun
Anyone who has listened to a parent spin family yarns knows that such stories are concoctions of myth and fact. But the books that emerge from these tales – Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, Denise Chong’s The Concubine’s Children or Michael Ignatieff’s The Russian Album – tend to favour one mode or the other.
Journey to Vaja fits the pattern: chronicling four generations of her father’s Hungarian-Jewish family, Montreal literary journalist Elaine Kalman Naves learned many of the romantic stories of Vaja, the village in Hungary where her ancestors lived, at her father Gusti’s knee.
-John Lorin, Quill and Quire.
