Behind the cover: Esther Keeps the Score

Alexiana Fry talks us through the symbolism within her new book’s cover.

They say not to judge a book by its cover. But the cover of Esther Keeps the Score is a work of art and holds a lot of meaning in it beyond just being aesthetically pleasing. I’d like to help you ‘judge’ this cover by explaining my intentions.

Although the book’s title is a direct reference to an extremely well-known work on trauma and was intentionally chosen for its popular recognition, I do have some concerns about both that book and its author. Nevertheless, there are two phenomenal books on trauma that I highly recommend: What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo and The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza. To quell my unease about my title, each of their book covers inspired and, I hope, redeem this one.

Although there are some parts that were added to make the cover a bit more ‘full’, there are specific images that correlate to what I wrote in the book, and also allude to the story of Esther in general, that are more significantly featured.

In the top right-hand corner of the cover, you will see a crown. This is absolutely Esther’s crown – our queen – but it is a particular kind of crown, a royal crown, and the word used in Hebrew for this crown can only be found in Esther (1.11, 2.17, 6.8). Thankfully, due to the scholarship of Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, who added examples of ancient Neo-Assyrian ‘mural crowns’ in his recent book on Esther, I was able to ask my partner to make a mock-up of this particular kind of headgear. This crown features a city wall with towers and might also have had a fabric component attached to it, almost like a veil. Karina Atudosie, a PhD candidate at Oxford, is also working on Esther and generously shared her discussion of this crown from her forthcoming dissertation with me. If you are familiar with other biblical stories, you might know that cities are often personified as women, as seen, for example, in the infamous chapter Ezekiel 16. It was common in this ancient context, beyond our biblical examples, to make this connection. Atudosie notes that the crown is directly associated with the feminine or feminized city, and, in a way, the queen becomes a symbol of the empire by donning it. I wanted the crown to resemble the walls we can see at the archaeological ruins at Persepolis, one of the capitals of the Achaemenid Empire. The bottom parts of the crown also contain other embellishments, including the star of Ishtar, after whom Esther is likely named, a Babylonian deity. It might be confusing to see all these different names – Neo-Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Achaemenid; the ancient past, even as today, regardless of how hegemons try to draw borders and boundaries around territories and people groups, was and is much more fluid and interconnected than not.

At the bottom left-hand corner of the cover, there is a leafy plant with bright yellow ‘flowers’. This is a myrtle plant, although a more typical myrtle plant would have white flowers. When we first meet my favourite character in Esther, she is actually first called Hadassah (2.7). ‘Hadassah’ is derived from the Hebrew word meaning myrtle. Myrtle plants are sweet-smelling, used in some perfumes, as well as in some marriage rituals. In fact, although many call Hadassah Esther’s ‘Jewish’ name (see also Isaiah 41.19, 55.13), this word can also be a play on the Akkadian word that is related to ‘bride’ or ‘marriage’, and is found in similar ceremonies where deities are betrothed or married. It was also a plant that, according to Stephanie Dalley, was offered to the aforementioned deity, Ishtar.

The grapes in the bottom-right corner of the cover are a reference to the large amounts of drinking in the book (1.7, 8, 10; 3.15; 5.6; 7.2), as grapes are a main ingredient in wine. Although it is not a feature in the regulations given for Purim celebrations, it will be a feature of later Jewish tradition, as early as 320–350 CE as noted in the Babylonian Talmud, that ‘a person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.’ A major theme in the book is that there is a significant amount of ‘blurriness’ where we readers might want clarity, which includes identities, statuses, emotions and morality.

On that note, the centrepiece of the book cover is a mirror. This time, I cannot claim that this mirror is something that would look like what ancient people also had, but in alignment with the previous discussion on drinking, a major element of this book is both noting the literary ‘reversals’ that occur in the story as a kind of mirror image, even a kind of ‘mimesis’, as well as my emphasis on being reflective and reflexive about oneself when reading.

If you haven’t noticed, although this book is written by a single person (me!), a book is not a singular project. Even the handful of people mentioned in this blog post as informing or inspiring the cover of the book hardly scratches the surface of the many incredibly talented people who make a book possible. I am indebted to and immensely grateful for their labour. A book is a material emblem of our deep and meaningful interconnection and interdependence, much like what I hope my book will encourage readers to both acknowledge and enact.

‘We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.’ – Gwendolyn Brooks

Dr Alexiana Fry is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Copenhagen for the project ‘Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism’. She received her PhD in Old Testament from Stellenbosch University in 2021.

Her new book, Esther Keeps the Score, is out this month and available to order here, with 20% off all orders before the end of March.

Our particular thanks to Leigh Hurlock who designed the cover in collaboration with Alexiana Fry and her partner.