A review by rachelgertrude
בת יפתח by Naomi Ragen

3.0

I really enjoyed reading this book, so I can't figure out why my main feeling about it now is irritation. I think it's because of the way it ties up. The whole story is so real and so honest, like a detailed photograph, and it feels like Ragen tacked on an ending where the characters suddenly appeared in cartoon form - recognizable, but dumbed down, caricatured. While they seemed to breathe a life of their own all along, the ending is like catching a bit of Ragen's shadow in the picture, and I suddenly had a sense of someone controlling the story and making the characters do things that didn't seem quite believable. The ending is what you hope for, and yet it comes off contrived and so it doesn't quite satisfy.