People of the Book in Reading with Style

May 13, 2010 Penny (Literary Hoarders) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: essex-county-library, books-read-in-2014, audiobook

What a wonderfully imagined story. Loved it all. Loved how the Haggadah was a central character. Edwina Wren's narration of Brook's novel was an experience very much like the one had when Fenella Woolgar read Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. Splendid. What a beautiful voice. ...more

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Dec 15, 2014 Bucket rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: women, life-and-death, reviewed, culture, diversity, experimental, history, race, religion, literary

"Well, from what you've told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other' -- it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists ... same old, same old. It seems to me the book, at this point, bear "Well, from what you've told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other' -- it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists ... same old, same old. It seems to me the book, at this point, bears witness to all that."

This is a quotation straight from People of the Book, but it also describes exactly what this novel is about, and Brooks chronicles each step of the book's path through history, from its creation to its final installation in Sarajevo.

I have to admit that this book is a masterpiece of research and plot design. It clips along, the characters are exactly as depthful as they need to be, there are twists and turns that I always figured out before they happened, but only right before. In general, this was impossible to put down until I finished it.

That said, it is not a beautiful novel - the language is standard, nothing is subtle or eloquent, and the themes are heavy-handed. For example, a summarizing sentence like this:

"[The haggadah] was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox."

It's completely unnecessary - the stories of what happens to the book, how Muslim, Jewish and Christian people variously help and destroy each other over and over, makes this theme clear. Brooks doesn't need to tell us over and over.

To me, it seems that Brooks knew she could write a masterpiece of suspense/mystery and she ran with that, at the expense of writing a masterpiece of literature. What the main character Hanna says of the essay she writes about the haggadah could be Brooks' own thought about her novel:

"I wanted this one to be different. I wanted to give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, protected it. I wanted it to be a gripping narrative, even suspenseful."

Themes: religion, history, mystery, conservation, secrets, intolerance, violence, culture, sacrifice ...more

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Dec 28, 2011 Jackie rated it really liked it

I have mixed feelings about this book. I loved the stories about the individuals who had contact with the book throughout history. I thought the modern story line was good, but weaker than the the others and I wished that it had a little less prevalence. I appreciated Hannah as a contemporary "person of the book," but not THE person of the book. ...more

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Oct 27, 2021 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery, libby, audio, authors-i-ve-read-5-or-more-books, books-about-books, read-again, religion-featured, historical-fiction, wartime, europe

4.0/5.0 - This book has two storylines. The first is Hannah Heath's story, and how she became the conservator in 1996 of the famous Sarajevo Haddagah, her family and their history. The second, more interesting storyline was of the book itself, the people who created it, cared for it, passed it along, and rescued it throughout history. That part was fascinating and well researched. It bears rereading in the future. Hannah's story was almost a distraction to me.
I started reading the print edition ...more

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