For Jacob's abandoned daughter, Davidow's grandmother Bertha, growing up motherless means 'to long for normality with such a desperation that it becomes a deformity of the soul', the psychological equivalent of a minor birth defect she is at pains to hide. The prospect of familial warmth and love propel Bertha, as the lure of a better life did Jacob, into crossing the Atlantic to marry a virtual stranger in South Africa.

Repeated loss and migration are Davidow's major themes, with blood the defining trope. The 'whisperings' of the title refer to notions of race memory and to mediated traumas, which are subconsciously transferred from parent to child. The fictionalised parts of her memoir are based on Bertha's diaries and letters, and suffer from a pervasive optimism sometimes at odds with the characters' often cruel and tragic circumstances. Davidow's insistence on blood and breath as the embodiments of fear, loss, and supressed grief provides only superficial insight, and the sprightly dialogue she ascribes to her characters does little to enhance their authenticity.

By far the most successful, and consequently affecting, sections are Davidow's personal recollections of growing up in an apartheid-torn South Africa, her anomalous identification with German language and music, and her re-enactment of her forebears' migrations.