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pelicaaan 's review for:
People of the Book
by Geraldine Brooks
I am very sorry to say that I didn't like this book quite as much as I'd hoped to. I have friends that loved it.
The main character, Hanna, is a rare book conservator who is working on an ancient and beautiful Jewish text. As she finds clues -- a wine stain, a hair, a butterfly wing -- the narration goes back in time, telling us the book's extraordinary history.
I really enjoyed the details of Hanna's life and how she does her job. I also enjoyed the trips back in time. But I wished the book would focus on one thing, and not scatter its attention around like that. I wanted it to either be about Hanna, or about Sarajevo in World War II, or about Renaissance Venice...not all at once and lots more besides.
This next criticism is more difficult to explain. There's something very issue-focused about this book that I didn't like. To wit: the book conservator who has problems with her mom; the Jewish girl who studies the forbidden Kabbalah in secret; the medieval same-sex couple; the Renaissance rabbi who is a gambling addict. And so on. It's like all these Oprah's-Book-Club Issues are being injected into history. It feels sort of artificial and anachronistic.
(I'm not saying that there were no gay couples or gambling addicts in the past; I'm saying that fiction that concerns itself with this sort of thing is a very late 20th to early 21st century phenomenon, and I found it manipulative somehow -- like those United Colors of Benetton ads that carefully include one member of every possible race. I'm not sure if that makes sense.)
Anyway, this is not a bad book; but I don't recommend it as highly as my friends did.
The main character, Hanna, is a rare book conservator who is working on an ancient and beautiful Jewish text. As she finds clues -- a wine stain, a hair, a butterfly wing -- the narration goes back in time, telling us the book's extraordinary history.
I really enjoyed the details of Hanna's life and how she does her job. I also enjoyed the trips back in time. But I wished the book would focus on one thing, and not scatter its attention around like that. I wanted it to either be about Hanna, or about Sarajevo in World War II, or about Renaissance Venice...not all at once and lots more besides.
This next criticism is more difficult to explain. There's something very issue-focused about this book that I didn't like. To wit: the book conservator who has problems with her mom; the Jewish girl who studies the forbidden Kabbalah in secret; the medieval same-sex couple; the Renaissance rabbi who is a gambling addict. And so on. It's like all these Oprah's-Book-Club Issues are being injected into history. It feels sort of artificial and anachronistic.
(I'm not saying that there were no gay couples or gambling addicts in the past; I'm saying that fiction that concerns itself with this sort of thing is a very late 20th to early 21st century phenomenon, and I found it manipulative somehow -- like those United Colors of Benetton ads that carefully include one member of every possible race. I'm not sure if that makes sense.)
Anyway, this is not a bad book; but I don't recommend it as highly as my friends did.