The Nature of Blood

A group of interwoven stories about the lives of “others”—in this case meaning a German Jewish girl in a DP (displaced person) camp at the end of World War II, Othello in Venice, and Jews in a 15th-century Italian ghetto (as well as briefly, a resettled Ethiopian Jewish woman newly resettled in Israel). All of the protagonists are outsiders. The voices are, for the most part, extremely well-rendered and the imaginings wonderfully vivid. My criticism has to do with how it all hangs together—or not. I understand, I think, the motivation for telling these stories together but they are unevenly weighted and on occasion, tedious. Nevertheless, he's a very good writer whose other books I will definitely look into. I understand that show more interwoven stories is his method and the subjects he chooses vary enormously. I have to admit to great curiosity. show less

Events set in the 16th- and the 20th-century are interwoven, narrated by multiple voices. The two main ones: Eva, the young Jewish woman, fugitive from the Nazis; we meet her first the moment the concentration camp is liberated by the British Army. Then the black general hired by the Doge to lead the Venetians against the Turks. The structure is that of a film: frequent cuts and flashbacks. Not easy this task: Phillips succeeds.
Reading demands close attention, not difficult this, the book captivates without one having to give up ones critical distance - it fulfills Brecht’s demands.
What humans can do to each other, the pain, can be overwhelming. Afterwards I wondered how Phillips could bear living with writing over weeks and months. A show more difficult book. A deeply human book. Brilliant! (VII-13) show less

This is one of those postmodern(ish?) intertextual modern novels that I don't really know how to describe. I suppose someone more familiar with the genre could do it, but other than saying "yeah, it's literary, also highly intertextual?" is beyond me.

It's really interesting, though. Fascinating, too. There's several plots within the book, I guess you could say, but they're all the same story, though the characters may be different age or sex or ethnicity, and the setting is different, too, in both place and time. The main thing is the cyclical nature of history and the treatment of the "other."

It's a bit odd to me that I love this book so much that it has remained on my "favorites" shelf after five years of culling old books-for-class, show more and I wrote two essays for the literary theory class about it, and I've referred to it several times in other classes (as an English major) -- but I just don't know how to put my thoughts on it into a short little review.

But I do know that I'm a fan of nonlinear narratives, and I like novels that explore identity and otherness, and The Nature of Blood is very much both of those things. It was a surprisingly easy read, too, even though I'm perpetually unfamiliar with Shakespeare's Othello, which provides a huge chunk of the story (this despite reading the play several times and even seeing it performed once). show less

Eminently teachable. I'm using it to conclude my MA graduate intro to literary theory course to serve as a kind of laboratory for postcolonial, feminist, trauma, new historicism, etc. criticism. Phillips has been well-reviewed probably hundreds of times, and this book in particular is a huge hit in academia (nearly 20 articles on it in scholarly journals since publication), so there's no much more for *me* to say here. I can point out, though, the opening pages, which, while they take place in Cyprus, seem to take place nowhere and at no time in particular. We could be in prehistoric times. My question for the students was, "when do we learn when and where we are? what are some effects of Phillips delaying this information?" A useful show more place to open discussion, once one ensures that the students have the plot clearly in their minds. show less