The excellent variety of horror featured in the start of this collection continues with a novel from 1981 that’s a melange of genres, Bari Wood’s The Tribe. Though the novel was acclaimed on its release, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t well known among general readers or most horror fans until Grady Hendrix brought attention to it again in the genre community.
And that’s a shame, because The Tribe is a novel of continued relevance, as well as intellectual and emotional depth, that makes it deserving of a broad audience beyond typical horror readers. It should have crossover appeal to fans of crime fiction, historical fiction, or religious mysticism, and its themes around Jewish identity, racism, and general humanity put The Tribe on equal footing to any celebrated work of ‘literary’ fiction.
Bari Wood’s work is probably best known to people through the film adaptations of her 1977 Twins. (No, it’s not the 1988 Ivan Reitman comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.) David Cronenberg adapted the novel as Dead Ringers, in that same year as the comedy hit. A 2023 remake of that then appeared by that awful studio that people keep supporting because of cheap shipping. Neil Jordan also adapted one of her novels into a film in 1999 (In Dreams, based on Doll’s Eyes.) I’m surprised no one has adapted The Tribe yet, though to work well I think it would demand a very particular director or collaboration that balanced the diversity in the novel between African American and Jewish culture/identity.
As a Jewish woman who grew up around Chicago, Bari Wood certainly embodied that side of the novel, while surely observing and knowing people from the other side. But I would be curious to hear the perspective of African American readers of this novel regarding her portrayal of one of its protagonists.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
The Tribe begins with a recounting of events during the liberation of a concentration camp at the close of World War II. Thirty-five years later in New York, the son of a rabbi who is among group of survivors of this camp is killed. Not long afterward the youths responsible for this murder are found brutally slaughtered, covered in a clay-like powder. Police Detective Roger Hawkins, the unlikely African American friend of Rabbi Levi whose son was slain, becomes drawn into the strange circumstances of what many in the Jewish community call justice, along with Rachel Levy, widow of the slain son.
Though Hawkins and Rachel don’t realize it until toward the end of the novel, it’s pretty clear to an informed reader (or someone who’s read a synopsis of the novel) that the ‘supernatural’ horror element of this novel is that it involves a Golem. However, the focus of the novel is far more on the humans involved than the Golem that is directly killing. In separate parts Wood gives Roger Hawkins’ point of view to relate the close friendship he founded and developed with Rabbi Levy, despite the disapproval of some of the others in Levy’s circle of friends. We also are introduced to Hawkins’ attraction for Rachel, and the conflicting feelings of attraction and guilt that engenders within him. In the second part the story continues from Rachel’s point of view as she tries to continue on with her life while discovering what her community is doing in retaliation.
As the title of the novel indicates, the major theme of the novel is Tribalism, this idea of us versus them, of retreating back into a tight-knit community that is loath to trust, or forgive others. The cause for this is of course human horrors that have been inflicted upon the community, which then perpetuate further horrors. This would be an oppressively dark thing to read if it weren’t balanced some by the characters of Hawkins and Rachel, who each embody exceptional empathy, openness, and love broadly to people who don’t look like them or come from their background or faith.
Moments of The Tribe are chilling during descriptions of the Golem’s rampages, but even more chilling are the more subtle moments spread throughout the novel that Hawkins and Rachel are constantly trying to fight against. I think this makes The Tribe even more important to read now then even several years back when this was re-released, or when it was first published in 1981. When fighting against darkness, hatred, and horror, it’s important to remember not to become what one is fighting.
