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THE ORCHARD

David Hopen

A debut novel, a story about the disaffection, and eventual moral dissolution, of a group of friends at a high-pressured Orthodox Jewish high school in Miami, based loosely on a Talmudic legend in which four rabbis enter an 'orchard' and leave fundamentally changed.

Inspired by Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and more recently in the vein of M.L. Rio's If We Were Villains, the novel centers around yeshiva-student Ari Eden at the moment his family has moved from a drab neighborhood in Brooklyn to the technicolor world of Miami and environs, transplanting him from the daily rhythms of study and prayer to the social whirl of his glossy new school. The book explores what happens when Ari's new friends, a wayward and exclusive clique, turn their Talmudic study group into a risky experiment in mysticism, threatening to take down their whole world with it. David has a Master's degree in Law & Literature from Oxford University, and he wrote a draft of this novel as an undergraduate at Yale. Nathan Englander has offered his support.

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Book Published 2020-11-17 by Ecco

Comments

A coming-of-age debut novel about an Orthodox Jewish high school student in Brooklyn who moves to Miami, "The Orchard" is powerful and stirring, like a 2020 Jewish version of "The Catcher in the Rye." Structured into chapters by month throughout a typical school year and tackling the "majestic sadness" that is tragedy, this journal-like book written by a Yale Law School student will definitely take root. (Get it? Orchard?) Read more...

Evocative of both Donna Tartt and Chaim Potok, The Orchard boldly dives into the depth of teen drama and Jewish philosophy and emerges with a heartfelt story of transformation.... An impressive debut! Read more...

The most brilliant novel I read this year. It's a wildly engrossing bildungsroman. ... And, WOW, that ending! Read more...

...Ari experiences some culture shock after moving from his strict Orthodox community in Brooklyn to a glamorous, wealthy school in Miami. He falls into an exclusive friend group influenced by a charismatic rabbi, and before long, his intellect and morals are tested by new interpretations of his faith. Read more...

David Hopen's debut uses a time-tested plotline (which is, essentially, The Secret History set among highly observant Jewish Floridians) in a fresh way, following Ari Eden as he moves from his ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn community to a flashy Miami suburb, where he spends his senior year of high school testing the limits of religious constraint with a subversive group led by a dispirited rabbi. Heretics, sex, drugs, and even Talmudic rituals that border on bacchanalia abound, carrying young Ari far from his staid roots and into a world of sin and risk. Read more...

Mesmerizing and playful, heartrending and darkly romantic, The Orchard probes the conflicting forces that determine who we become: the heady relationships of youth, the allure of greatness, the doctrines we inherit, and our concealed desires. Read more...

THE ORCHARD is a wildly ambitious, propulsive novel touching on big, life-altering topics, but David Hopen manages that weight by never losing grip on the story, which blends philosophical questions with a unique thriller and a group of teenagers who command your attention. There's a yearning at the heart of the novel, a reckoning with those moments when we transform and when we wonder if we could ever go back. I'd be so wary of comparing any novel to Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY, but THE ORCHARD can handle it because it diverges in such interesting ways.

Picture THE SECRET HISTORY but instead of an elite college campus, an elite Jewish high school. Instead of rural Vermont, Miami. And instead of a commandeering classics professor with a penchant for bacchanalia, a rabbi using religion to push his students. Read more...

Brilliantly conceived and crafted. Unforgettable. Extraordinary. Read more...

I wonder if the publisher might want to use this endorsement: So captivating, I didn't want to watch Schitt's Creek. THE ORCHARD is fresh, devastating, and thought-provoking.

I guess it would be accurate to call The Orchard a coming-of-age story, or a fish-out-of-water story, or a clash-of-cultures story, or a crisis-of-faith story, or a false-prophet storythe truth is, The Orchard is all of this and more. It's a story of profound intelligence, a story of tragic grandeur, and a story unlike any other I've ever read.

An entirely surprising tale, rich with literary allusions and Talmudic connections, about the powerful allure of belonging. This novel will likely elicit comparisons to the work of Chaim Potok... but Hopen's debut may actually have more in common with campus novels like Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY and Tobias Wolff's OLD SCHOOL... Hopen's debut signals a promising new literary talent; in vivid prose, the novel thoughtfully explores cultural particularity while telling a story with universal resonances. A captivating Jewish twist on the classic American campus novel.

THE ORCHARD is A Book Riot Best Books of 2020 A Recommended Book by The New York Times, Electric Literature, Amazon.com, Entertainment Weekly, Book Riot, Alma

A tremendous read, a brilliant excursion into the world of orthodox Jews, both thrilling and philosophical.

A commanding debut and a poignant coming-of-age story ... Mesmerizing and playful, heartrending and darkly romantic, The Orchard probes the conflicting forces that determine who we become: the heady relationships of youth, the allure of greatness, the doctrines we inherit, and our concealed desires. Read more...

THE ORCHARD is one of The New York Times' "New Books to Watch For in November 2020" Read more...

David Hopen's 'The Orchard,' an audacious combination of ancient Jewish sources and Donna Tartt, points a way forward for Jewish American fiction Read more...

Russia: Phantom Press

David Hopen's riveting debut joins the urgency of a thriller with the devastating consequence of a spiritual crisis for its hero, who is no less imperiled by his religion than by the threat of its loss. In Ari Eden's story the clash between youth and experience, godlessness and piety, individualism and conformity, will feel both devastatingly familiar and utterly new. THE ORCHARD throws open the doors to this world, and introduces a major new voice.