Miryem Mandelstam is the only child of a poor Jewish moneylender who cannot bring himself to collect money from those who borrows from him. And this pain, this pain of not finding your true home, not being accepted anywhere as an equally respectful human being, is the main focal point of Miryem’s story. Be it by the Christians or the Muslims, nowhere were the Jewish people accepted wholeheartedly, the antisemitism was so strong. And everywhere they were mistreated as the outcast, forced to live in a separate section of any city or town or village than others, forced to build their own little world.

Ousted from their homeland in Israel, the Jewish folks then spread throughout Europe. This book shows us all the pain and suffering the Jewish people had to undergo throughout the Middle Ages and later on. The main protagonist, Miryem, is a Jewish girl, and author Naomi Novik herself is Jewish. Mostly because unlike UPROOTED, SPINNING SILVER has a real life connection to it. And though SPINNING SILVER got that in similar with UPROOTED, the former is a lot more symbolic and meaningful than the latter. Though the Goodreads synopsis was vague, I somehow got the idea that it was about another tale of a supernatural creature stealing away a maiden for some gain. When I started this book, I was already anticipating great things from Naomi Novik, given how some of my friends and a lot of Goodreads reviewers were saying SPINNING SILVER is better than UPROOTED.

I started this book immediately after finishing UPROOTED (one of the most memorable books of my life!) and I gotta say, SPINNING SILVER somehow surpassed even that! My thoughts are all jumbled and scattered only because this book shattered me to the utmost and in a really good way.

Goodreads spinning silver