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The Dovekeepers

Alice Hoffman

Start date: July 22, 2013

Finish date: July 31, 2013

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What Members Thought

Oct 05, 2011 Bonnie rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, 2011-books

I don't know for sure why, but this book never really connected with me.

Maybe it was the pages and pages of description and hazy, arms-length tone that made me feel like I was viewing the whole story through a wall of gauze. Maybe it was the fact that I neither liked nor disliked the characters - sometimes they interested me, sometimes they irked me, but mostly I felt nothing towards them (this is really, really bad when you know the book ends with mass death). Maybe it was because although I kn I don't know for sure why, but this book never really connected with me.

Maybe it was the pages and pages of description and hazy, arms-length tone that made me feel like I was viewing the whole story through a wall of gauze. Maybe it was the fact that I neither liked nor disliked the characters - sometimes they interested me, sometimes they irked me, but mostly I felt nothing towards them (this is really, really bad when you know the book ends with mass death). Maybe it was because although I know technically a lot happened - personal sorrows, family dynamics, treachery, battles, death - it felt like a lot of nothing happened.

For whatever reason, the only character that made me perk up and invest was The Man From the North - a Welshman pressganged into the Roman army, captured by the Jews and forced to be a slave working in the dovecotes in Masada (also, I totally thought he was Norse until the afterword described him as Welsh. This makes much more historical sense - the Romans never made it to the Nordic countries, but they did conquer parts of Wales. For whatever reason I just assume any fierce northern warrior with many redheads among their people are Nordic). Anyways, The Man From the North is the kind of character I find naturally appealing - clever, stoic, brave. He was passionately in love with Yael, and thus I liked her by association (but only when she shared scenes with him).

It may be surprising that I liked a minor character the best when there are six potentially compelling female leads. There's Yael, the assassin's daughter, Shirah, the Witch of Moab, Aziza, raised as a boy and trained as a warrior, Nahara, daughter of Shirah and sister of Aziza (yeah, she never stood a chance of being interesting), Revka, who watched her daughter be brutalized then killed by soldiers and who is fiercely protective of her grandsons, and Channa, the rebel leader's crazy wife. And yet. I found them all incredibly unappealing and when that happens, I tend to latch onto a more interesting minor character (this happened in its most extreme version in The Other Queen, when I became disproportionally invested in a character that appeared in only about 5 pages of the book).
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Jan 16, 2015 Katie Tillwick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Amazing! I was drawn into this world, into the lives of these four women, of the choices they made (foolish, many of them), and how it affected those around them. Devoured this book.

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Oct 14, 2011 Tfalcone rated it liked it

Certainly a worthy story - the story of the Jewish massacre at Massada. I find myself wishing we would go faster. Too much hunger and dove watching so far.

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