Who is the Illuminated soul? The initial answer is that it is Eva Laquedem, who appears at the home of Adele Ivri and her two sons in Windsor, Ontario. She is a refugee from Nazi Europe, carrying with her a famous illuminated manuscript, the Augsburg Miscellany. Eva takes the boys and Adele into the rarefied world of ancient and exquisite beauty, but also the need to guarantee the progeny of beautiful objects. But Eva herself presents a command performance by her sheer entry into a room, and captures everyone who looks at her into her special world. She does pine the possible loss of her father, for whose knowledge she is on a complex quest, and is the reason for her travels in Canada.

Asa, the brother of Joseph, who narrates the novel, may have an illuminated soul. He suffers from a slowly developing blindness. Eva is albe to affirm to affirm his special quality as a human being and he seems to have a character full of simplicity and goodness that one might associate wih a good soul. He is able to draw and very accomplished at it, and his life possesses a worthwhile quality to it.

Adele may have become illuminated, as she performs research across the river in Detroit for Eva, because Eva has developed a passport problem. Adele is widowed, bright, devout but closed in. But she is transformed by Eva when she begins to discover her own talents in baking and and then is able to set up her own business.

Perhaps even the narrator is illuminated in the relaying of the life of Eva and theose who are transformed by her. We as readers may allow ourselves to be transformed and allow ourselves to produce our illuminated life. ( )

Written in a poetic and dreamy style, I enjoyed the language and especially the characters of The Illuminated Soul. The story centers around a rare fifteenth century manuscript and a lovely, mysterious woman who enters the lives of two boys and their mother one summer. Joseph, the elder of the two boys, is obsessed with perfect readings of Torah, while the younger is going blind and depends on a strip of silk to filter the sun's light. A neuroradiologist, Stollman interweaves just a touch of science into a beautiful and mystic look at relationships and the power of the desire for beauty. ( )

An attempt to combine science and love and Jewish mysticism that didn't quite work. It was a slight novel, and I never warmed to the characters. ( )