(Originally in Newsday on Nov. 24, 1996)

The Swine's Wedding
By Daniel Evan Weiss
High Risk Books/Serpent's Tail
216 pages; $17.99

Reviewed by Daniel Akst
Copyright Daniel Akst; all rights reserved.

In this day of multiracial marriage and men plighting their troth to other men, it's hard to believe that anyone would bat an eye at the wedding of Gentile and Jew, yet just such a commonplace occurrence accounts for plenty of fireworks in Daniel Evan Weiss' disturbing and accomplished new novel.

Surely the Evel Knievel of novelists, Weiss challenged Kafka and Don Marquis in his previous fictional offering (The Roaches Have No King) by giving us a roach's perspective on city life. This time the author manages to rejuvenate an even more hopelessly hoary subject by combining imaginative technique, great insight, a sure comic touch and (I'm not kidding) a harrowing re-creation of the Portuguese Inquisition. The result is an astonishing work that is to Abie's Irish Rose what Crime and Punishment is to Dennis the Menace.

The Swine's Wedding tells the story of Allison Pennybaker and Solomon Beneviste, a nicely matched pair of yuppies in a nameless American town who plan to marry despite the inconvenience that the bride is Episcopalian and the groom nominally Jewish. Since there is little for the groom's formidable mother to do in the planned church wedding other than pay for it, Solomon busies her researching their family history. She doesn't mind: "Who am I to intrude on the confection of a huge, bland cake, most of which will end up in the pocketbooks of old ladies, destined for their maids and dogs?"

But when Miriam Beneviste, a professional librarian, starts pulling roots, she doesn't stop. What she discovers is that her forebears suffered torture and death for their faith, and those fortunate enough had to become (ital) marranos (end ital), the term applied to Jews forced to embrace Christianity. The word literally means swine.

Already none too pleased at the thought of her son marrying in a church, and inflamed by the condescension of his anti-Semitic future mother-in-law, Miriam does what she can to persuade Solomon to uphold the faith of his fathers and mothers, even if she has raised her son in such apostasy that he doesn't have much of an idea just what he would be upholding. Things start to unravel right about now, and a book that seems to start as comedy builds to an awful and tragic denouement.

I hate it when reviewers give away the whole plot, so believe me when I tell you I'm not doing that here. The Swine's Wedding begins with the official report of a mysterious fire, and further such ominous documents are interspersed here and there between the alternating diary entries from Allison and Miriam that comprise the entire narrative.

Thus, the back-and-forth over Allison and Solomon's wedding arrangements is experienced in a climate of foreboding that helps the author surmount the essential quaintness of intermarriage as a subject in 1996. As a matter of fact, The Swine's Wedding is marred by no speck of schmaltz, although Weiss does sometimes blunder. At one point, a crucifix charm on Allison's bracelet slices open Solomon's neck, simultaneously poking the reader in the eye. Also, the rhythms and humor of Allison's diary sometimes seem as Yiddish-influenced as the monologues of Alan King; she's been spending all her spare time with that dreamboat Solly, sure, but since he doesn't even sound Jewish, it's surprising how often she does.

But these miscues are minor compared to the breathtaking confidence with which the author tumbles across the highwire he has laid out for himself. The Swine's Wedding is one of those books that achieves suspense in part by threatening early and often to collapse in a heap of sentiment, caricature and cliché, yet Weiss sure-footedly sidesteps disaster.

Literary pyrotechnics aside, Weiss' powerful message seems to be that obsession with the injustices of the past is no less dangerous than ignoring them, a valuable lesson in this age of identity-group politics and universal victimhood.

Indeed, the novel's great strength is its success at realizing the voices of two very different women who love the same man, and who reveal themselves (along with most of the other characters) as fully human individuals even as their creator flirts with stereotypes. The Swine's Wedding is a funny, dark and ultimately searing book that is both a pleasure to read and too painful to forget.

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