Her Name Was NeOmi by Seta Shishmanian
What's It About?
It all started with a letter. Katherine, a professor of mythology and critical thinking, decides to translate a letter written by her grandfather 60 years ago, a letter that contains a family secret concerning his sister. The letter launches a mysterious tale of time and place.Her Name Was NeOmi (Gatekeeper Press) by Seta Shishmanian is a tale of immigrants, told in an idiosyncratic, poetic style in the present tense. Its effect is dreamlike and surreal.
After translating her grandfather’s letter, Katherine writes a novel based on what she has learned about her family. Her publisher sends the manuscript and the letter that inspired it to the Library of Congress to be copyrighted. Natalie, the woman registering the novel’s copyright recognizes a possible ancestor in the book: NeOmi, the same name as Natalie’s grandmother. “Is it a myth? Or is it forbidden to know?” she asks herself. Natalie speculates on her own lost roots.
“It’s fiction,” Natalie muses about the novel. “It can’t be real. Who can she ask the truth without making a fool of herself? Who can she confront? She pulls back to understand who she is or where she’s coming from.”
TOLD IN AN IDIOSYNCRATIC, POETIC STYLE
A bomb threat at the Library of Congress sends workers running into the street, where snipers shoot them. “The whole building is surrounded by evil bad guys. It’s scary,” comments the omniscient third-person narrator. “Anyone wishing to harm this nation are called ‘the bad guys.’”
“Natalie discerns that being human today is more and more like being a robot. She concludes that one day the world will rotate differently, with machines and robots instead of humans.”
Is this book science fiction? Fantasy? “Who can be indoctrinated,” wonders Jason, Natalie’s husband, who happens to be having an affair with Natalie’s secretary.
Once Natalie reads the translation of the letter, the story of NeOmi begins to come clear. More than 100 years ago, NeOmi was born in an unnamed Eastern European country into a well-to-do family with a three-story stone house, land, animals and an orchard. After her father dies, her older brother leaves home for nearby Romania. NeOmi, “between eight and ten years old,” and her mother are left alone at the mercy of looters and unrest as World War I looms.
What follows is a displaced person’s story. NeOmi’s mother is killed by a soldier who kidnaps NeOmi and takes her to the woman who took care of him as a little boy. He wants his old nanny to keep NeOmi safe until she’s old enough for him to marry.
The book offers a glimpse into countries and families torn apart by war, and how people survived. NeOmi is sold to the emperor’s palace to rise through merit. “All the girls are pretty. We admire their smiles and their humility. They will grow up with good manners. The palace dresses them in new clothes and slippers,” says Ovid, the palace eunuch.
At the palace, NeOmi’s falls in love with a royal knight, and her story becomes one of political turmoil and children born in countries not their own. “Maybe one day we will return to our nation,” says NeOmi of her two sons. But when she does, there is no home there.
THE IMAGES IN THE BOOK CONTINUE TO RESONATE
“It depends on where we are and who our allies are,” a woman tells her. “There are different cultures in the same country.”
It’s an unconventional novel. There’s even a cameo appearance by the novelist Colette. And the characters of the beginning — Katherine, Natalie, et al, never appear again. But the images of Her Name Was NeOmi continue to resonate.
The night after I finished reading it, I had dreams of being in a crowd of people who came to America from distant lands and, in spite of their different cultures and religions, found a place to be safe and prosperous. As Natalie reflects upon early in the novel, “Everybody comes from difficult lands. The difference is that some still will never know.”
