People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of People of the Book: A Novel
Book Review: A holiday read rather than anything deeper
Summary: 3 Stars
I was disappointed with this book after some of the glowing reviews on this site: it's a perfectly adequate holiday read, but personally I found it emotionally unsatisfactory and quite contrived.
Hanna is a book conservator who is employed to restore a 15th century Jewish religious book; she does this and finds some artefacts that raise questions in her mind of how they got there - an insect's wing in the binding, a wine stain mixed with blood etc. The narrative intersperses these stories in between Hanna's own first-person story, but there's no great mystery involved.
Hanna herself never uncovers these stories for herself and I did find myself wondering why we need to know. At the end we're left with a story of the people who've encountered the book at various stages of its life, but they're quite arbitrary. Many of these stories are of exiles and persecution of the Jews throughout history, and this is where the weakest part of the book was for me: I felt that the author wanted to make a political point about inhumanity, intolerance, humanity under the most difficult circumstances - but they remained an intellectual exercise rather than coming to life and conveying any real, true emotion.
I would guess that whether you love this book or not will depend a lot on whether you warm to the voice of Hanna: I unfortunately found her Australian voice and attitude irritating and again very contrived. The cliches came thick and fast: the disturbed relationship with her feminist mother leaving her cold and unemotional; the father figure in her university conservationist-mentor; the instant love affair (even though it only lasts a few nights) with the war-ravaged Muslim...
The end of the book, too, takes off in a disconcertingly odd angle that is completely out of keeping with the rest of the story: and not in a good, compelling way, just another artificial twist-in-the-tail to try to make some kind of moral point.
So overall this is a perfectly acceptable tale for whiling away a commute or other long journey, but it's fairly shallow and, for me, instantly forgettable.
Book Review: mixed
Summary: 3 Stars
I have mixed feelings about this.
It follows on the back of Dan Brown and Kate Mosse and takes you into similar places. Underlying the book is an interesting premise but...
It is too obvious if you want something better and more stimulating.
For fans of Kate Mosse, Dan Brown but maybe not Umberto Eco...
Book Review: Sorry Not My Cup of Tea
Summary: 2 Stars
I got this book through Amazon Vine, I am so glad that I didn't actually buy it. To be fair its not my idea type of book but I did find it very formulaeic and soap opera. I didn't enjoy the writing style at all and found that I really didn't care about the characters or saving the manuscript. Sorry but I really couldn't recommend it to anyone. Given it 2 stars because it isn't my usual choice of reading material and someone who buys it because of the description may enjoy it more.Book Review: This book has it all!
Summary: 4 Stars
If you are looking for a novel that is full of history, romance, and excitment then is the one for you. You are pulled into this world full of details and facts about the journey of one book! A world full of passion and wonder. Once you read this novel it is easy to see why this authors last work, won a Pulitzer Prize.Book Review: Pulpy, but not trashy
Summary: 4 Stars
Yes, yes -- a couple of the negative review(er)s have a point: there is nothing much that elevates this book above a slew of other historical fiction books beyond a basis in truth and good (not merely competent) writing. You can easily dismiss Brooks's story as emotional fluff if it weren't for the existence of an actual Sarajevo Haggadah saved by Muslims over the course of its history.
Even before I read the afterword and was still just wondering if there had been a real illuminated Haggadah, I happily admit to enjoying the book. I don't think I was ever so grateful that I arrived at work early enough to have time to read before I started work. Of course, a lot of it's made up. Of course, a lot of it revolves around the people involved with the book rather than the book itself. It's FICTION, and it's called "PEOPLE of the Book" -- HELLO! Not "The Book" or "The Haggadah." Geraldine Brooks wasn't presenting her novel as history. Fiction demands imaginative and emotive writing more than accurate fact presentation. And I don't think it trivializes anything: it doesn't claim to be more than what it is. I wanted to read about the people, actually, and Brooks wove in enough detail -- about the book, about the characters living in different times and places, about conservation, about present day situations -- to make it all interesting and credible. In comparison to her first book, "Year of Wonders", it helps that "People of the Book" begins with Hanna living and working in the present and returns to Hanna and the present between dips into the different periods in the book's history.
It was absorbing, it was entertaining, it had darkness, it had a happy ending. It tried to be hopeful for mankind. That it contains nuggets of truth and that there is a real Haggadah makes me want to find out more about the Haggadah. It doesn't make me think that it all happened exactly as Brooks wrote it. You can't even expect that from historians.
I don't know who said don't let truth get in the way of a good story. But enjoying a good story isn't the same as forgetting that a good story isn't always the truth.