Magnificent characters with complex psychologies, including adventurous entrepreneurs and several courageous women, populate this generational tale of the Sephardic diaspora ... The story glides effortlessly between viewpoints and vibrant settings ranging from Lisbon to Tangier, the Caribbean, and Mexico City. With prose as clear as the star-strewn night sky, Morris’ novel explores people’s hidden connections.
In Gateway to the Moon, award-winning novelist Mary Morris draws a map straight from the terror of the Spanish Inquisition to stagnant lives in a dirt-poor New Mexico village, half a millennium later ... Morris writes with a relaxed eloquence, shifting easily through characters. Gateway to the Moon is an entertaining, thoughtful read that raises a relevant question: Appearances aside, just how different are we?
This thrilling, shattering literary novel spans centuries and continents ... Morris’s taut, sculpted sentences make a stately music, weaving a beautiful and heartbreaking history that balances the worst of human cruelties, from poverty and violence to betrayal and neglect, with the sweetest human longings for meaning, for connection, and to uncover the mysteries that make us who we are.
Morris seamlessly drops hints of their Jewish past in ways that the characters themselves do not fully comprehend ... In Morris’s descriptions of life on the Iberian Peninsula, she skillfully recreates Jews’ fear of betrayal, as well as the exhaustion and despair of those who chose exile. Modern-day readers will learn what it was like to leave everything behind without a known destination or a safe way to travel ... In less skillful hands, the sheer number of characters in different eras would prove confusing. However, Morris weaves a clear and interesting tapestry.
Exploring the dangerous events and resonant connections—a dish of spiced lamb; a unique clock—linking Luis to Miguel, Morris evokes terror and hope. Her earnest, episodic work deploys a rich palette of detail and color, its breadth only occasionally marred by thinly relevant subplots and a sense of treading water ... At its best, this historical novel achieves affecting, poetic notes, its vignettes illuminating one thread of the Jewish Diaspora.
