The Priest Fainted

March 2, 1998
Imam baildi, a Greek dish whose name translates to "the priest fainted," is a delicacy both bitter and sweet--like this meditative debut from poet Davidson (Inheriting the Ocean) about a young Greek-American woman's journey to her ancestors' homeland. Framed by Greek myths (which open each chapter) and interwoven with tales of her mother's visit 30 years earlier, the story concerns the odyssey of an unnamed, 19-year-old narrator who travels to Athens and the small town of Larissa, unwittingly following in the footsteps of the mother she is trying, for the moment, to escape. Her own lively expatriate experiences--which include an obsession with a promiscuous Greek basketball player, a friendship with an impetuous American model, an Athenian newspaper job and a firsthand understanding of the conservative ethos surrounding Greek women--show the difficulty of being at once of a culture and foreign to it. As she slowly discovers more about her mother's life-altering decision not to marry a Greek man, she realizes that not all family resemblances are on the surface. Davidson's reworking of the myths sometimes feels familiar (yet another unremarkable interpretation of the Orpheus and Eurydice story) and she has a tendency to poeticize that detracts from the narrative's authentic charge. Nevertheless, her voice is agile and intelligent, and the novel ultimately proves to be a surprisingly resonant melange of wisdom and humor, a testimony to the strong bonds of family and cultural traditions.