Elon (If You Awaken Love) takes an author on a journey into the past as he travels to his birthplace of Amsterdam and sees a photograph of his mother taken decades before. Israeli author Yoel Blum journeys to Amsterdam at the request of his publisher, though his deceased mother had told him never to visit the city of his birth. He and his wife, Bat-Ami, visit the Jewish Historical Museum and view black and white film clips, which include a clip of his mother holding a baby. Yoel instantly wonders why his mother is holding someone else’s baby rather than him as the child’s features are different than Yoel’s.

Upon his return to Israel, Yoel questions his older sister Nettie about the film clip, and she reveals to him what she knows of the past. Yoel is determined that he needs to go back to Amsterdam to find closure about what his sister has told him.

After arriving in Amsterdam the second time, Yoel checks into a small, somewhat shabby hotel and begins writing his next book as he carefully studies his surroundings. Yoel wonders about the nearby residents whose homes he spies through his window. He also visits museums and synagogues, imagining his mother living here amid the Nazi occupation.

But Yoel does more than imagine his mother’s life. His present-day living is interspersed with his retelling his mother’s story in his latest book. His narrative highlights how she and her husband lived in a basement apartment with their young children as the sinister evil of Nazi occupation began to fill every corner of Amsterdam.

Yoel’s narrative of his mother’s story, as told through his eyes as an author, provides the novel with a singular perspective not often present in historical fiction. Fans of World War II historical fiction will be entranced with Yoel’s story, which is rich with historical detail and startling revelations.

The beginning of this book is fantastic. It draws you in right from the start and I was hooked on finding out all about Yoel’s past. The short chapters offer a faster paced read as well, which I personally prefer.
The description of Amsterdam was gorgeous and I want to go back now!!
However, once Yoel returns to Amsterdam everything seems to feel a tad disjointed and nothing felt like it really flowed. I loved the Sonia POV but they kept getting interrupted by Yoel reminiscing, which just became annoying and disruptive.

If the different timeline POVs had been clear and not interrupted then I think I would’ve enjoyed this much more, but I just really struggled.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

At the heart of this book is a mystery - a mystery of love and loss, family, history, and identity. The mystery begins when Yoel Blum, a noted Israeli author, arrives in Amsterdam, the city where his family lived until the war, for a book tour. During a visit to the Jewish Museum, Yoel sees a black and white filmstrip that, ostensibly, shows his mother and an infant son who is not himself. So begins Yoel's quest to decipher precisely it is what he saw.

At the point, the book constructs itself in two separate but parallel narratives - the story of Yoel uncovering the secrets of his family, and the story of his mother, Sonia, in the days before and during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The device of using parallel narratives to tell a story can be a tricky one as one narrative may outweigh the other in the mind of the reader. That is what occurs in this case. Yoel's narrative drags a bit, understandably due to the fact that it is mostly centered around his wanderings and musings in the city of Amsterdam. While Sonia's story is centered on her fraught realizations that the terror of the war is not-so-slowly encroaching on her once-happy life. I found myself wanting a little less of Yoel and little more of Sonia.

Nevertheless, there are some truly poignant and moving parts to this book. As it leads up to the heartbreaking denouement, there are so many engaging and taught moments that make the reader want to follow Yoel until he discovers what has been hidden from his history.

Thank you to netgalley, the author, and Atria Books for an arc copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When edited this will be an interesting story of the lost children of World War II in Holland. The author writes her fiction in a way that could have actually happened to the Jewish people. Another tale of the terrible time.

Great read. Slow at times, but the author wrote it in a way that you had to keep reading to find out the full story. Oh how I want to go to Amsterdam!!!

In this novel Israeli author Yoel Blum revisits the town of his birth Amsterdam. When a foreign author writes about your own country that can be tricky as every mistake in research will reveal itself. But this novel is at first a "feast of recognition" as we say in Dutch: the strict border patrol (I am an immigration lawyer and many client complain exactly like Yoel does), the street musicians playing under the arch of the Rijksmuseum, the tall houses divided in apartments along the canals, the hotels with all the tourist trinkets and all the bits of facts and history about Amsterdam and The Netherlands. But the story takes a turn to the serious side soon after.
While visiting the Museum of Jewish History Yoel discovers a video showing his parents with his sister and a till then it seems unknown brother. Back in Israel he calls his sister (both his parents are dead) and asks her about that boy. She tells him the story but we are not told what the story is.
Yoel decides to return to Amsterdam to fill in the blanks. We see him wander the city and write the story of his mother using elements of what he sees or does himself that day. Like when he is drawn to a painting in the Rijksmuseum he wonders why and incorperates that painting by hanging it in the house of his mother's upstairs neighbours.
In the meantime we get to know his mother better by reading the story he tells about her. She was married to a doctor from the Jewish hospital in Amsterdam and leading a happy life with him and their two small children and his best friend and his wife and child who were their upstairs neighbours thinking the war will soon end. But we see dark clouds packing on the horizon and bit by bit the life of the Jewish people in Amsterdam gets more and more dangerous. As a Dutch person I am quite familiar with that history but still it is unnerving to feel the noose tightening.
I was glued to my kindle wanting to know what did happen with little Leo. I had quite a suspicion but still.
But when you then have finished the book it still resonates. So I called my dad who is as old as Yoel Blum and also was a child during the war and studied psychology to become a teacher. The author explains in the book that many of the children that were hidden away from the Germans suffered from attachment problems after the war. When I was that age my mum got severely ill and I was fostered out to different aunties and even I notice how that effected me. Can you imagine an even worse situation during the war? The author in my opinion also describes the effect this all has on Yoel's mother. While she was a happy go lucky woman with friends in Holland later on in Israel she does not want friends. First I thought that was to keep her secret but I realised it was the aftershock of the way she was betrayed.
At the end of the story Tal, Yoel's grandson, says that Yoel's mum acted out of revenge. I think that is not true. I think she kept the secret out of love as it is obvious how much she loved him. Hints to that are all the Madonna sculptures in the museum.
Another layer in the book is how it shows us the live of a writer and how personal adventures end up in novels. How a novel is created. How a famous writer is approached by total strangers. I think that part must be based on the author's own life.
I think it was quite courageous to pick the topic of collaboration by the own Jewish community with the Nazies. I also liked that the Dutch non-Jewish community is shown realistic: some friends from school who become a policeman driving Jews from a park, others dying to save their Jewish fellow Dutch. No black and white cliches.
There is just one point of criticism and that is a case of "lost in translation" from Dutch to Ivriet to English. The word that was used for hiding for the Germans was "onderduiken ( a verb)" and it is translated as "dive (a noon)". Diving IN for instance water is duiken IN in Dutch. But when you want to hide under the blankets, want to pick something from under your desk you use in Dutch duiken ONDER (diving under). That is translated as hiding in or under and not as "Go diving" or "do a dive" I think. As far as I know I have never heard in Dutch the term Duik for the verb Onderduiken. But I am from years after the war.
It does not happen that often but in this case the Dutch translating is already published while we are reviewing the English one.
I am not sure what the title stands for. In the book a synagoge is described as built over water; Yoel's mother uses the proverb "Water under the bridge" often and I think in the Bible it is said that God's spirit was over the waters.

The House on Endless Waters by Emuna Elon is a book composed of short chapters. Yoel is a writer who travels to Amsterdam for an upcoming book where he goes to a Holocaust museum and finds a picture of his mother, father, sister, and a little boy who isn't him. Thus begins Yoel's search to find out the truth of the little boy and himself as well.

This is my first Emuna Elon book and it will not be my last. I loved this book. I highly recommend it.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

The chapters are very short, making the pace feel fast. As the story begins, it pulls the reader in very quickly. But once Yoel is back in Amsterdam searching for some answers and as the story switches between present and past times and him reminiscing about his family, a disconnection happens.

While in Amsterdam, you’d think that the story would alternate in time between his story and his mother or put him on a straight forward search for an answer. Instead, there is a lot of reminiscing about his family in Israel and his childhood as emigre in Israel.

I don’t find progression of a story through reminiscing as an engaging read.

Once the story of Sonia, Yoel’s mother, and her family start, it gets grasping again. However, the grasp keeps slipping away very quickly as chapters on her story are very short and it goes back to the story of Yoel in Amsterdam and his reminiscing.

The problem with Yoe’s story is that it itself is set in present and past time and then it keeps alternating with the past story of his mother. There is too much of going back and forth, and that actually makes the story disengaging.

Nevertheless, the lyrical prose and the alternating times some might find interesting.

This is a fascinating novel about remembrance, uncovering and rebuilding. Yoel and his wife visited Amsterdam from their native Israel and find a scene in a film clip at the Jewish museum that leads Yoel on a voyage to learn about the baby in the picture.

Since Yoel is an acclaimed author he uses this period not only to explore his own past but to write a novel about the people and events during the holocaust years in Holland. We see Amsterdam through his eyes now and those of the characters in his novel. He is able to weave the story of his own heritage into his newest work.

The two stories are combined as we travel with Yoel until he unfurls his own story.

I enjoyed this beautifully written book.

Thank you Netgalley.

House on Endless Waters is a profound meditation on what matters most in terms of identity and the role that family secrets play. It tells the story in two timelines. In the first, Israeli writer Yoel Blum, now a famous novelist and a grandfather, goes to Amsterdam for a book signing PR tour and wanders into the Jewish Museum. His family emigrated from Amsterdam to Jerusalem so it would not be surprising to find some trace of his roots there. And, indeed, he does, but not necessarily what he expects. In a black and white movie footage playing in one of the museum displays he sees quickly as it goes by what appears to be his parents and his sister and a baby. But, after watching the footage over and over as it plays in an endless loop, Yoel is certain that he’s not the baby boy in the footage. And, this sends him into a tailspin. For if that’s not him - and the features aren’t right- then who is he and who is in the footage.

Just as adoptees still yearn for information about their birth parents and have a need to fill those gaps, Yoel can’t leave this alone. He presses his sister for information and, putting aside his PR tour, returns to Amsterdam to wander the streets and piece together but by bit what happened during the War.

The other timeline is his parents’ timeline as life in Amsterdam becomes more and more precarious after the German invasion. Think about Anne Frank’s Diary and accept that a few blocks away there was another family struggling to survive as bit by but their freedoms and their possessions were taken away. And this is the story of Yoel’s family and the story - that he never knew - of their existence in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam where the Jewish community had once thrived since the Spanish Inquisition in 1492.

And in this family story is a secret that Yoel had never had a clue about, something that will shatter his very understanding of who he is and what his history is.

This is in many ways a gentle melancholy story - not filled with action - but compelling nevertheless.

House on Endless Waters by Emuna Elon is the story of Jewish author Yoel Blum discovering who he truly was. His mother, sister, and Yoel had been part of an exchange where Dutch Jews were allowed to move to Israel and German prisoners held in Israel were released. Yoel's mother had told him to never return to Amsterdam where he had been born. He had followed her request until his publisher pressured him to go to promote one of his books. While there, touring the Jewish Museum, Yoel sees a photo of his mother, his sister Nettie, and a child he does not recognize. This causes him to search for his roots. Along the way he learns about the Natzi treatment of the Jews in Amsterdam and the underground network of people who hid Jewish children from danger.

This is a difficult book to read. There are Jewish phrases and the Dutch street names to contend with. (I wish the publisher had a put a map of Amsterdam in the front of the book.) The book also jumps back and forth between the adult Yoel who is searching Amsterdam for the truth about his identity, and his writings about the events that happened during the 1940s. For a while I was not even sure if Yoel was writing a fictional story or a factual story. The transitions between the two eras are sometimes awkward and difficult to distinguish. I almost gave up reading it, but it does get easier during the last half of the book.. I was glad I finished the book. It was most interesting to learn about the "hiding" of children during that time and the impact it had on their adult lives.

This was such a beautifully written book.
Yoel Blum has always avoided Amsterdam, but now he's headed there to work on his upcoming novel. The descriptions used for Amsterdam or wonderfully written, giving the reader beautiful views through the words. Yoel learns so much about his family and what people went through during the Nazi's occupation. It's a beautiful, haunting book, and is worth the read.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the eARC.
What a beautiful, lyrical and moving book this is, absolutely exquisite.
Yoel Blum, a famed Israeli author is in Amsterdam, looking for answers to his past, planning to write his most personal book yet. He was born in the city before his mother, sister and he ended up fleeing the Nazis, settling in Israel.
He stays in a small hotel in the area where he lived with his family as a small toddler, wandering around filling numerous notebooks to use as a base for his upcoming novel.
These trips around Amsterdam are wonderfully written, I felt I was with him in this beautiful city and felt so lucky that I had actually been there and could visualise most of his wanderings.
The horror of the occupation is depicted so sensitively that I was in tears at times, it's so heartbreaking to imagine what people went through, torn from their families, homes and country.
This is a book to be treasured and despite the sorrowful subject, the ending is full of hope and redemption. Do yourselves a favor and read this book! Highly recommended

****House on Endless Waters set primarily in Holland, is the story of Yoel, an Israeli author who discovers that what he knows about his life might not be correct. After seeing a video clip of his mother holding a child that is not him at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, Yoel embarks on a journey to discover who that blond haired child was and begins to understand the lengths Jewish parents would go to try to save their children from Nazi eradication. The author is very adept at painting pictures with words. The reader is transported not only into the scenery, but also into the mind of Yoel as he begins to internalize what his people endured during WWII, who he really is, and why his mother kept to herself in Israel. This is an important story especially when one considers that antisemitism has not been eradicated from the consciousness of all humans as that war should have done. Highly recommend.

I am interested in this book and asked to download it to my Kindle. What I got on my Kindle was a one page marketing sheet, not the book. I therefore am unable to read and review this book.

House in Endless Waters was an excellent read, with a compelling story and fully developed characters. The way the author meshed Yoel’s own view of Amsterdam with that of his protagonists was seamless and allowed me to fully immerse myself in both tales.
Sonia’s emotional turmoil about how to best keep her children safe, along with Yoel’s struggle to find a sense of belonging, was deeply touching, and hits hard at the core of being human.
The book also has a strong historical core, bringing the plight of the hidden children of Amsterdam, and the terror their parents went through.