Shop Blog > Recommendation > People of the Book: A Novel
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People of the Book: A Novel
- Viking Adult
- 2008-01-01
- 2907Rank
- $25.95
- See details at Amazon
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Wonderful Idea - Mediocre Work
The idea of the book is wonderful. I love the idea of tracing the history of an item, and particularly a book, through its past owners and their personal journeys. The actual work however lacks characters that you care about. Hanna is not someone to identify with. I agree with other reviewers that the Harvard thing gets really old, as does her relationship with her unfeeling mother. The short stories are not good enough to make you really care about any one of the people that you meet throughout the book. The ending is terrible - You don't get enough character development to truly understand the end climax so that it all has to be explained in the last chapter. It makes it contrived and ridiculous. Added on to that - there is not one good Christian in this book. In the afterward, she says that the only thing known about the priest, Vistorini, is his signature that is on books that were spared during the Inquisition, including the haggadah. So of course, he should be made into a smelly alcoholic who signs the haggadah partly because of a trick and a game that he plays with the rabbi who is begging that it be spared, and partly because of a drunken nightmare that he has. I wonder how his signature came to be on the other books that he did sign without games and nightmares? I would not recommend this book. The lack of depth and character make the short histories tedious and the end ridiculous.
