"Smart yet tender, funny yet deep, The Book of Faith, is a sly, witty send-up of squabble-filled synagogue politics ...".
– Yona Zeldis McDonough, The Lilith Blog.
"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
"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."
– Ami Sands Brodoff
"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
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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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.
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Photo by: V. Tony Hauser
