Fervor by Toby Lloyd

This reading group guide for Fervor includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Toby Lloyd. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

Before Yosef Rosenthal dies, he summons his three grandchildren to his attic room in order to speak to each of them alone. He tells Gideon that he will move to Israel, Elsie that she hears the voice of God, and Tovyah, the youngest, that he must watch out for his sister and brother, for the second son protects the others. Yosef’s death sparks a chain of events that will break the remaining Rosenthals forever: model daughter Elsie begins acting out in disturbing ways, then she disappears. Four days later, she returns—pale, dripping wet, and transformed. Years later, having moved out of the family home to attend Oxford, Tovyah, the youngest Rosenthal, wants nothing to do with the rigid world of his parents. But then why is there a man in white sitting next to him that nobody else can see? And what is the bright light that shines from the cracks in his doorway when the other students are asleep? Fervor is a stunningly written debut from Toby Lloyd—at once a family narrative, a spiritual quest, a psychological exploration, a campus novel, and a horror story that asks what it means to be bound to an ethical and metaphysical system that is thousands of years old . . . and if you reject that system, what is left of your identity?

Topics & Questions for Discussion

Brainstorm some adjectives you would use to describe Tovyah, Kate, Hannah, Elsie, Eric, and Gideon. What traits do they have in common? What aspects of their identity create the biggest rifts between then?

Why do you think Lloyd wrote most of Fervor from Kate’s point of view? How does that choice contribute to the novel’s tone?

Eli Schultz concludes his lecture in chapter four by asking the audience to commit to memory ten names of people who perished in the Holocaust, ending by saying, “Let us always remember, as long as memory holds a seat. Shabbat shalom” (page 48). Later, Tovyah angrily accuses Kate of failing to learn her ten names, reiterating that if she cared, she would already know them. What role does remembering play in Fervor, and how do the characters in Fervor approach the intersection of faith and memory differently?

Chapter six tells the story of Hannah and Eric’s courtship, as well as how their childhood experiences shaped their relationships to Judaism and Jewish identity. How do you see these formative experiences reflected in their adulthood? Does it impact their marriage and parenting styles?

During Hannah’s interviews, Yosef explains how the wax of a candle turns into gas, which is the element that burns and creates the flame. “This is the same concept in the lager. Burning human beings is tricky. The human liquid, the fat, drowns the fire. Fire dies, you have to start over” (page 80). What was Yosef trying to tell Hannah? Where are there other instances of or allusions to fire, burning, and light in Fervor? What does it represent?

Jan and Hannah sit on two ends of the political spectrum regarding Israel, and other characters occupy a vaguer middle ground. What do you think of the Israel-Palestine arguments in Fervor, especially in a contemporary context? Lloyd includes a similar range of opinions about other issues in the book, like whether or not Kafka was an anti-Semite, and the true nature of Elsie’s ills. What is the effect of this?

What do you think was so impactful about Elsie’s relationship with Carl that his betrayal in part triggered her disappearance?

After the prayer and before beginning the Shabbos dinner at the Rosenthal house, Gideon whispers to Kate, “Now your work begins” (page 245). What does he mean by this?

Overall, how would you describe Tovyah and Kate’s relationship? When Kate approaches Tovyah in the train station years after Elsie dies, she notes that although he pretends not to know her, she sees recognition—and also fear—in his eyes. Why do you think that is?

How do you interpret the epilogue? Does it reveal anything to you about Elsie’s fate?

Enhance Your Book Club

As a group, come up with a list of other novels wherein Judaism or another religion figure strongly, and discuss how these selections differ from or are similar to Fervor.

Narrate a scene from the novel from a new perspective. For example: How does Elsie feel when she visits Tovyah at Oxford? Where was Gideon when Elsie went missing? What does Jan think of Kate and Tovyah’s friendship?

Cast the Fervor movie or miniseries: Choose your top picks for the main roles, and make a case to the larger group about who would best embody each character.

A Conversation with Toby Lloyd

How did you choose the epigraph?

Before researching the novel, I’d never encountered the Hassidic legends. What followed was instantaneous love. Meyer Levin’s versions are particularly beautiful. The epigraph is one of the most perfect and succinct stories I have ever read. Both cryptic and hilarious, it reminds me of the best micro fictions of Lydia Davis and Franz Kafka.

But why does it belong at the opening of Fervor? Rapidly, it conjures the central themes of the novel: the quest for scriptural authority, the inevitability of misinterpretation, and the tensions that arise between people with conflicting ideas of reality.

How did your experience having a Jewish mother and secular father influence Fervor? Could you describe a bit about your own relationship to Judaism?

Secularism is a tremendous gift to any child, especially one who grows up to be a writer. To be secular means to be intellectually free. It enables you to place curiosity ahead of piety and to be entirely catholic in your tastes. Secularism also allows you to make a virtue of irreverence, a quality without which Fervor could not exist.

For a writer, a Jewish heritage is perhaps an even more wonderful gift. Is there a greater literary tradition? Or one that spans as many languages and centuries? By comparison, the works of ancient Greece are a ruined temple, English literature a mewling child.

When did you begin writing Fervor? As you were developing it, did you reach for any books or other media for inspiration?

I began work on the novel in 2017. During its composition, I read as much scripture, theology, and Jewish history as I could get my hands on. Also dozens of Jewish novels: all the Roths (Philip, Joseph, and Henry), and the Jacobsons (Howard and Dan), as well as innumerable Cohens and Levis. Cynthia Ozick’s stories lit up my sky. Harold Bloom’s reading of the Torah, The Book of J, was extremely helpful. And Primo Levi’s memoirs of Auschwitz and his reflections in the decades that followed were invaluable.

Aside from books, I watched a lot of horror films. The Exorcist and The VVitch helped the most. Karol Szymanowski’s Mythes for piano and violin provide, for me at least, something like a soundtrack for the novel.

Which of the characters in Fervor did you find easiest to write? If you could return to any in the form of a short story or novella, who would you want to explore?

Not wanting to bait the muse, I’ll avoid the word ‘easiest.’ Let’s say Hannah was the character who came to me first, and she remains the one I see most clearly. As soon as I had the idea of this zealous convert, determined to write her father-in-law’s Holocaust memoir (with or without the old man’s consent), I knew she would live on the page.

If I revisited a character, it would be Tovyah. I’d be curious to see how he rebuilds his life after the events of Fervor, having at last freed himself from the shackles of his family. Would I write a sequel though? Probably not. There are many other fictional worlds to explore. I’m only getting started.

Did you ever consider writing Fervor with more certainty around its bigger questions? Is there one right answer about what happened to Elsie?

No and no. All stories are concerned with the relationship between cause and effect. But as every child knows, establishing a final cause is a fool’s errand—hence the game where the infant asks his long-suffering mother why something is the way it is, and every answer she gives, no matter how thorough, is rewarded with yet another “But why?”

The novels that most interest me are those in which the author allows this paradox to flourish: the storyteller must give readers an account of how one event leads to another, but that account is necessarily dubious. I’m not talking of unreliable narrators but the impossibility of flattening the chaos of experience into a sequential narrative. Certainty is always an imposition and is often politically motivated. Why else does history have to be rewritten by each successive generation?

To your mind, what is the role of love and devotion in this book?

Spiritual devotion—devotion to God—sooner or later comes up against love of one’s family, because no one gets to have two number one priorities. This is dramatized in the twin myths of the binding of Isaac and Jephthah’s daughter. When push comes to shove, do you choose your children over your God? In scripture, the unequivocal answer is that you choose your God: Abraham may be let off the hook, but he does not refuse the command. For Hannah and Eric, this problem gives rise to the ultimate test of their faith.

In its extreme form, spiritual devotion also overrides self-preservation. Not only do the Old Testament parents willingly accept the orders of their child-murdering God, the children don’t complain either. Neither Isaac nor Jephthah’s daughter stages a rebellion. This is the source of Tovyah’s atheistic rage. Judaism commands us to honor our mother and father. But how can we do so when father is wielding the knife and when mother is egging him on?

All believers must surely long for a less violent path, where spiritual devotion and human love exist harmoniously. In the novel, it becomes Kate’s quest to discover such a path.

Is there a scene or sentence about which you are especially proud?

There are several. The arrival of the crowd of mourners at Yosef’s funeral. Eli Schultz’s lecture. Tovyah’s disastrous interview. The climatic dinner scene.

The final sentences of chapter twenty-three are extremely beautiful but, alas, they are not mine.

What do you hope readers will take away from the novel?

I’m not much interested in reducing works of fiction to a central moral truth. Instead I believe the best fiction brings life into sharper focus, and in doing so, renews the reader’s wonder at the business of living. That is my greatest hope for the book and my final aim