Bram Presser once came upon his grandfather in the backyard of his Melbourne home. The old man, a Holocaust survivor, was running his fingers through the dirt and incanting a prayer. Suddenly, he thrust a fistful of earth at the sky. When he turned, Presser saw tears streaming down his grandfather’s face. He writes that he would “never forget that look of fear and sadness. As if I’d just tripped over his soul.”
Dirt, as the title suggests, is an important motif of this exceptional work of love, empathy and obsession. It is grime and muck, symbol and metaphor. It is also the literal stuff of one of Judaism’s most potent myths and symbols: the golem. A golem is a creature formed out of clay and brought to life with words. It can protect its creator from threat but may also grow in power and strength until it becomes the threat itself. If The Book of Dirt is a family memoir, a historical investigation, a mystery and a love story, it is also a potent golem tale.
Read the full review at The Saturday Paper.