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337th out of 3,825 books
—
3,999 voters
The World to Come
A million-dollar painting by Marc Chagall is stolen from a museum. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a thirty-year-old quiz-show writer. As Benjamin and his twin sister try to evade the police, they find themselves recalling their dead parents—the father who lost a leg in Vietnam, the mother who created children's books—and their stories about trust, loss, and betray...more
Paperback, 336 pages
Published
October 17th 2006
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published January 1st 2006)
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An absolutely exquisite, beautifully written book! I loved the Yiddish folklore included throughout the book (especially the story of the already born returning to heaven to prepare the not yet born for their lives) and the ideas of the not yet borns "eating" art and "drinking" literature in heaven in preparation for their future life on earth. The author tells the story of a Chagall painting and the impact it has on all the individuals within three generations of the family who come to possess...more
This is one of those books, if you're an aspiring writer, that either inspires you to take the plunge and give birth to that novel that's been lurking in your heart since you were fifteen or (to continue the swimming pool/underwater birth analogy) intimidates you back into the dressing room, forces you to put your street clothes back on, and makes you seriously think about giving up all creative endeavors to become an accountant. At a tire store.
This book amazed me. I borrowed it from a friend...more
This book amazed me. I borrowed it from a friend...more
By the end of the first 50 pages or so, I was pretty excited about this book - I thought it was going to be a better " History of Love". Better because the texts that bring the characters together are so much richer than the pseudo-Borgesian book-within-a-book in "The History of Love". So I was very disappointed when I realized that the stories that connect the narrative threads in "The World to Come" were not the author's invention but an adaptation of old Yiddish tales. The rest of the book, t...more
2 likes · like · see review
This was one of the most affecting books that I've read. The story and its themes stayed with me for months after I read it. Today, as I am pregnant, I think about one of the great ideas presented in the book about how everyone in your family before you, who has passed on, contributing something essential to the lives of those not yet born. I loved the characters---and the way the story took a piece of art work (in this case by Marc Chagall) and gave it a personal history. I would recommend this...more
Manufactured misery. This effort reeks of the university workshop. Assembly was required. Ms. Horn appears to have taken the template of Nicole Krauss and where the latter has a character confront or be molded by The Shoah/Stalin/La Junta; Horn eschews the pivotal "Or" and asks why not cobble on a Chernobyl and Vietnam as well? You may think some characters are mistreated. My constructions really suffer from History (and goyim).
I already hated this novel when the absurdity was suddenly amplifie...more
I already hated this novel when the absurdity was suddenly amplifie...more
By far THE BEST book I've read all year. Perhaps one of the best and most beautifully written books in recent literary memory. Please read this book if you appreciate history, art, and love.
3 likes · like · see review
I loved the beginning of this book- got bored with the middle- and loved the end. Horn's writing is schizophrenic (if you will) throughout the book, which I guess made it interesting.
My english teacher in high school taught me that everything is a copy of a previous work- you learn and expand on ideas and theories from the past. Horn does exactly this. She takes previous ideas, already written stories, and historical events and makes them her own. Once I thought about it and it's significance t...more
My english teacher in high school taught me that everything is a copy of a previous work- you learn and expand on ideas and theories from the past. Horn does exactly this. She takes previous ideas, already written stories, and historical events and makes them her own. Once I thought about it and it's significance t...more
The World to Come is far and away the best work of fiction I have read in a very, very long time. It is beautifully written, with haunting characters and stories that will stay with me forever. Run, don’t walk, to buy this book - you should own it, not just check it out from the library.
Other than that, I don’t really know what to say. I am still reflecting and absorbing the things Horn writes about, and the way in which she writes about them. This is the newest member of my “best books ever” li...more
Other than that, I don’t really know what to say. I am still reflecting and absorbing the things Horn writes about, and the way in which she writes about them. This is the newest member of my “best books ever” li...more
This book is a real "thinker". It came from Bookstock this year, and the cover was what grabbed me. Fortunately, the contents were right up there, too. You can't just read it and walk away with a full understanding; the author leaves many endings up to you. In one way, that is the small dissatisfaction that I have--one story line just begged for the easy answer! In the long run, though, it is better the way the author leaves it.
Horn takes a real art world heist as a starting point, but moves on...more
Horn takes a real art world heist as a starting point, but moves on...more
Jan 07, 2013
Luci Fortune
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Mystery lovers, art lovers, history of the USSR
This was a great book but very hard to follow. There are so many characters and the book constantly jumps back and forth in time. But the story itself is very interesting. The best I can do to summarize it is to say that one of the main characters, Ben, finds a Chagall painting in an art gallery and steals it because it was the exact same one his family had on their wall when he was growing up. It turns out there's a lot of history for that painting and everyone involved. There are twists and tu...more
Like matryoshkas (Russian nesting dolls), there are stories within stories in this delightful, warm, ambitious novel. If you don't know Yiddish literature, a fair amount of the intricacy of this novel may go right past you, but if you do, so much the better.
At first blush, The Word To Come is about an eccentric Jewish family (originally from Russia) dealing the thefts (historical and contemporary) of a Chagall painting. That part of the story is well crafted and tender. But embedded in that nar...more
At first blush, The Word To Come is about an eccentric Jewish family (originally from Russia) dealing the thefts (historical and contemporary) of a Chagall painting. That part of the story is well crafted and tender. But embedded in that nar...more
The World to Come offers a prismatic view of love and spirituality through multiple generations of a Jewish family and their relationship to a mysterious painting by an exiled Soviet painter. The central plot is a pretty straightforward mystery, but you soon realize that this os one of those kinds of books "borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Dara Horn revels in jumping from era to era, which often leads to a dizzy comingling of narratives, but also reinforces the theme of eternal return. So e...more
Dara Horn revels in jumping from era to era, which often leads to a dizzy comingling of narratives, but also reinforces the theme of eternal return. So e...more
This is a book that requires contemplation. There are so many different threads woven throughout the book. Stories within stories within stories. My only complaint is that the book was unevenly written. Certain parts are so beautifully written and engaging... at times I felt like I had picked up a different book entirely. But towards the middle, it began to drag... slowly. My attention wavered. The focus of the book shifted and suddenly I wasn't as interested. Unfortunately the "modern" day stor...more
I read Dara Horn’s newer book, All Other Nights, earlier in the year, so when I was struggling to find something to read, I decided to go with this pretty well-reviewed novel. I’m going to be really lazy and just share this synopsis from Amazon, instead of trying to write one myself:
At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben’s twin sister Sara forces him to attend a singles cocktail part...more
At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben’s twin sister Sara forces him to attend a singles cocktail part...more
Jun 26, 2010
Roberta
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
really can't recommend it
I almost gave this only one star, very rare for me. And I can see from other reviews that I'm squarely in the minority. I got the CD version to "read" during a car trip with my husband and had high hopes because I had read positive reviews of other books by Horn. But....two stars because there are very interesting themes and a lot of insightful forays into human behavior...but...to me she was desperately in need of a good editor. Long, long passages to make a point that was made over and over. T...more
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Her book begins with an art heist of a Marc Chagall painting and ends with a supernatural tale of the existence of a ‘Not-Yet-Born child and how he is prepared for birth. I found this last chapter rather distracting, preferring to have the tale end with characters I was already familiar with and through their perspective rather than their unborn child’s. It was enlightening to learn about Chagall—his experience teaching young boys orphaned by the Russian pogroms and his relationship with Yiddish...more
Jan 04, 2009
Mary
added it
this is a fascinating booik on two levels. the story involves an interlocking set of characters, originating in the Russian Jewish community before and after the first world wr, when many died and suffered , and some escaped to Europe or the US. The painter, Marc Chagall is one who escaped and became highly successful in New York. Many of the writers stayed, tried to fight Fascism, and were swept up in Stalin's purges after WW II. We meet the contemporary family of Ziskind's, Daniel and Rosalie...more
This book is about the lives, thoughts and feelings of three generations of a Jewish family intermingled with a Chagall painting. I really enjoyed being absorbed into the Jewish folklore, theology & history, and the Yiddish culture. The interweaving of past and present, painting and folktales, love and fear, connection and loss, was so well done that I couldn't put the book down. I cared about this family and didn't want the book to end.
Some of the folklore was captivating-- the story of th...more
Some of the folklore was captivating-- the story of th...more
I finished this book several hours ago thinking about it ever since. Magical realism with Jewish-Russian themes. The color and light of a Chagall painting told in chapter, verse and fable. The horror and memory of countless acts of violence spanning from the destruction of the first temple and the diaspera of millenea. The savagry of the 20th century masked in political "isms", leading to the terror of today. This book is about all these things and much much more.
The stories and the characters w...more
The stories and the characters w...more
What a truly amazing novel. I am not sure any review I could write would give it enough credit. Stretching over several generations, this novel begins with the theft of an important sketch by Chagall by Benjamin Ziskind, a once-child prodigy that has yet to find his way in the world. From there, we are taken back to an orphanage in Soviet Russia, in which Chagall taught, and up through the generations until we again meet Ben and his twin sister Sara as adults. Throughout the novel, art becomes t...more
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One of my friends said that she didn't like Jonathan Safran Foer because he threw in so many heart-breaking images without ever really explaining them, just kind of jamming them together.
This was like that, except a lot of the imagery wasn't particularly heart-breaking, the writing wasn't particularly good, and there were a lot of loose ties left at the end of the novel.
More than anything, I didn't end up caring about any of these characters.
This was like that, except a lot of the imagery wasn't particularly heart-breaking, the writing wasn't particularly good, and there were a lot of loose ties left at the end of the novel.
More than anything, I didn't end up caring about any of these characters.
This is an excellent wonderful book full of everything - lyricism, love, torture, philosophy, even adventure and mystery and war. It was also a five star book until the last chapter which was gratuitous and unnecessary and did nothing to add to the story. Everything that chapter had to say had been so beautifully hinted at throughout the book that to write it out was to be indulgent. It was the opposite of CoCo Chanel's great advice put in a literary setting - instead of taking one accessory off...more
This is a difficult book for me to rate. I'd say 2.5 stars and I'd have liked to give it 3 stars but parts irritated me so much I can't say I enjoyed it overall, nor would I recommend it. For example, the constant referral to the dimples under characters' noses was interesting at first, then predictable and made me laugh (not in a good way), then felt just plain annoying to the point I wanted to throttle the words. On the other hand, I enjoyed the Yiddish folklore. That and the topic of reincarn...more
I wanted to like this a lot. I love folktales of all sorts, and I was really excited about the blend of Yiddish folktales I was expecting to see here.
However, while I enjoyed the long Vietnam section, as well as some portions of Benjamin's growing-up, I wasn't there on some other parts. The Der Nister sections were weirdly overwrought, and the long afterlife/pre-life block at the end was a combination of hippie-tastic, faux-mystical, and overly precious that just didn't work for me.
I think that,...more
However, while I enjoyed the long Vietnam section, as well as some portions of Benjamin's growing-up, I wasn't there on some other parts. The Der Nister sections were weirdly overwrought, and the long afterlife/pre-life block at the end was a combination of hippie-tastic, faux-mystical, and overly precious that just didn't work for me.
I think that,...more
This book has a bit of history in it. In 2001, a small piece by Chagall was stolen from the Jewish Museum in NYC during a singles happy hour. The author takes this theft and creates a fictional story around it. The story does include some history, including a look at Chagall's life in Russia in the 1920s and an author with whom his path crossed but whose future turned out very different than Chagall's successful career. The fictional art thief is a recently divorced man with a rich family histor...more
Unfortunately I don't have the vocabulary to convey just how beautiful the writing in this book is. Intense imagery and stories full of mystery, love and sadness. I loved learning the little details about Jewish beliefs and ways of life. I am left a little confused on some parts though. I'll reread it someday because this book really is that good.
It starts out with Benjamin Ziskind. He's at a singles cocktail party at the New York Hebraic Museum when he happens upon a study painting by Marc Chag...more
It starts out with Benjamin Ziskind. He's at a singles cocktail party at the New York Hebraic Museum when he happens upon a study painting by Marc Chag...more
I'm reading this for a book club, it's the first book and it's a wonderful book. There are so many images and themes that are easy to pick up on, even if I'm not sure what they all mean, the story and the characters are all seamlessly tied together by these images, like blue paint on arms that mimic veins.
I read one of my favourite lines in the book today, that gave me a chill.
"Every pregnant woman was carrying the dead" pg 178. It might sound like a morbid notion, but in the context of the nove...more
I read one of my favourite lines in the book today, that gave me a chill.
"Every pregnant woman was carrying the dead" pg 178. It might sound like a morbid notion, but in the context of the nove...more
Inspired by a true story of a Chagall painting that was stolen from the Jewish Museum in New York in 2001 (which later turned up), The World to Come is at once a mystery, Jewish history and folklore, biography, philosophical treatise, love story, and fantastical adventure. Horn, a scholar of Hebrew and Jewish literature, has produced a surfeit of riches. With elegance and sympathy, she interweaves multiple stories about Yiddish literature, Stalinist Russia, Ben's father's Vietnam service, and th
...more
This book was...expansive. Complicated. Good thing I read it in paper form as opposed to Kindle because I had to keep going back to figure out who everyone was related to, and on Kindle I would've been 100% lost, as opposed to the 40% lost I still feel by the end of this book. I can tell it was well written and everything does connect up in some way, but I just don't quite have the brain energy right now to wrap my mind around this whole book and its implications. Learned some interesting things...more
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Unpredictable and not at all pedantic like other modern works, "The World to Come" is about heaven and did indeed serve as an anesthesiac at times (it's January for g*dsakes!). A cloudy feeling sometimes fills the room. It is a book about faith: if you DO have it, then "The World to Come" will make you smile, wide, like a cheshire cat. It speaks of so many different themes, has stories within stories that validate a pulsating thesis: Live Life. Discover its multidimensional complexity.
All of thi...more
All of thi...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| what happened to Ben | 10 | 123 | Dec 05, 2009 08:22am |
Dara Horn was born in New Jersey in 1977 and received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 2006. In 2007 Dara Horn was chosen by Granta magazine as one of the Best Young American Novelists. Her first novel, In the Image, published by W.W. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fi...more
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“I believe that when people die, they go to the same place as all the people who haven’t yet been born. That’s why it’s called the world to come, because that’s where they make the new souls for the future. And the reward when good people die” – her mother paused, swallowed, paused again – “the reward when good people die is that they get to help make the people in their families who haven’t been born yet. They pick out what kinds of traits they want the new people to have – they give them all the raw material of their souls, like their talents and their brains and their potential. Of course it’s up to the new ones, once they’re born, what they’ll use and what they won’t, but that’s what everyone who dies is doing, I think. They get to decide what kind of people the new ones might be able to become.”
—
19 people liked it
“Children are often envied for their supposed imaginations, but the truth is that adults imagine things far more than children do. Most adults wander the world deliberately blind, living only inside their heads, in their fantasies, in their memories and worries, oblivious to the present, only aware of the past or future.”
—
14 people liked it
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Oct 31, 2009 07:51pm