A review by mnach
Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered: One Woman's Year in the Heart of the Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters of Old Jerusalem by Sarah Tuttle-Singer

adventurous emotional reflective fast-paced

2.0

Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered represented the final book entry for this year (5781) for the Israel Between the Pages book club at CBB.  

Going into this book, I expected an exploration of the city that was based in anthropology and history.  However, the story is more of a personal memoir by the author, Sarah Tuttle-Singer.  And for those expecting a pleasant tale, this is not it!  If there’s one thing I can say about the writing in this book is that it’s very raw and honest.  In the first chapter, Tuttle-Singer shares deeply personal and traumatic experiences that include her being raped on a trip to Israel, being stoned by teenagers at Damascus Gate, and having to deal with the death of her mother from cancer.

Once Tuttle-Singer’s jarring introduction to her life is completed in the first couple chapters, she delves into the main purpose of the book, which is to explore Jerusalem and its people over the course of a year while living in the old city.  These explorations occur largely through conversations and interactions with various people in the city.  The people represented in the book are interesting types, but none of them linger long enough to become very multi-dimensional.  Their fleeting presence in the book also leads to broad and inconclusive generalizations (not offensive generalizations, but generalizations nonetheless).

Throughout the narrative, Tuttle-Singer periodically interjects reflections on her past traumas into the story and attempts to tie them into her current experiences in the city.

There were a handful of stories in the book that stood out to me.  There was one about Tuttle-Singer accompanying a friend to the Temple Mount so that the friend could secretly pray.  There was another story (which felt poignant given the recent events in Israel) about her seeing an Arab acquaintance making violent declarations against Jews at a protest by Palesitians to reclaim Al-Aqsa Mosque and later seeing that same person show extreme delicacy and compassion towards a kitten found in a pipe.  And another story about her daughter re-contextualizing a statement expressed by one of her peers that generalized Arabs.

All in all, though, I believe this book acts as a catalyst for remembrance for those reading it.  Those that have been to Jerusalem will trigger personal memories of the city through Tuttle-Singer’s recollections.  Those that are looking to learn about Jerusalem from the book will learn as much about it as they would about the people living in Paris through a movie like Paris, je t'aime.

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