I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Israel a year and a half (!!!) ago on a fully funded Birthright trip. Not only did I meet some amazing people I still spend time with today, but the whirlwind, breakneck speed of the trip meant we got to cram a lot of things into a short time and get a fairly good sense of the country and its people. When this book graced many “Best of 2014” lists, I was excited to see a book with strong Israeli ties as well as a sense of intrigue and mystery.
I was kind of disappointed.
The story centers on a woman piecing together parts of a larger story, some of which involved people she’d met before and is largely based within some Israeli context. On one hand, I loved the references to places I’d visited or heard about. I got a real internal sense of pride when I knew what the author was talking about. To make it better, I had just discussed how much I can appreciate modern Jewish history, even when it has little to do with my personal history, which is (sort of) one of the core parts of this book.
But on the other, more dominant hand, something about this book did not hit the marks I was hoping it would. It was jumbled and messy but not in a way that made me feel any more connected to the characters’ experiences. Instead, it was hard to focus and hard to follow- while I have noted my appreciation for jumping through timelines to tell a story, this technique was used poorly in this case.
I was hoping to get through the book quickly towards the end- I didn’t feel any of the disappointment when it ended as I did with The Other Wes Moore, a noticeable difference considering I read them one after the other. I hesitate to call it bad, because the descriptive writing was fantastic, but it was perhaps a book that needed more focus- both on my part and that of the author.
You’ll like this if: you like strange books, I guess? I’m not sure what genre this falls into. Sort of mystery? There wasn’t a lot of suspense, but there were puzzles that needed solving.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 