"People of the Book: A
Novel" by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Adult, 9780670018215, $25.95)
Geraldine Brooks has never been a one-subject writer, and each of her
carefully researched books forges its own path through history: "Year of
Wonders" tackles the bubonic plague in Restoration England; "March,"
for which she won a Pulitzer, follows Mr. March, the absent man of "Little
Women," as he goes away to war in the South; and with "People of the Book,"
her new novel, Brooks creates an ever-more-intricate web of fiction
surrounding the rich, real-life history of an enduring medieval artifact,
the Sarajevo Haggadah, a famous illuminated Jewish prayer book.
The novel follows Hanna Heath, an Australian book conservator, as she is
summoned to Bosnia to repair the recovered Haggadah, which had been almost
miraculously saved from destruction by a Muslim librarian during Bosnia's
violent ethic conflict in the 1990s. During her conservation, Hannah
discovers a number of tiny clues to the mysterious prayer book's history--an
insect's wing, a hair, a wine stain, a few grains of salt--and those small
relics lead the reader back in time to witness how each item found its way
into the book's pages at important points in the manuscript's storied
history.
Passed through the protecting hands of Muslims, Christians and Jews, the
book moves from a Bosnian freedom fighter running from Nazis in World War
II, to a genteel doctor treating the rampant syphilis of turn-of-the-century
Vienna, to a ghettoized Venetian rabbi in 1609, and back to its origin in
the Jewish enclaves that flourished in Spain prior to 1492. Each bearer
leaves a mark on the book, and the Haggadah's remarkable presence transforms
each life it touches.
Brooks's author's note describes her fortune in being present when the real
Sarajevo Haggadah was meticulously repaired under heavy guard in December of
2001, and she deftly combines reality with plausible fiction to create a
thoroughly compelling novel. "People of the Book" transports its readers to
fascinating scenes in Europe's past, but it offers far more than a
smattering of history lessons. With each chapter--and each engaging new
character--Brooks provides another perspective on the ever-present challenge
of building community and promoting tolerance despite fault lines of fear
and deep-rooted mistrusts. Through the fog of time, the Haggadah and the
people who save it time and again emerge as flawed, beautiful specimens of a
humanity still yearning, learning, and moving, fitfully, in the direction of
hope.
Review by
Mark David
Bradshaw and Beth Golay, January 3, 2008
Read Mark's review of
"March" by Geraldine Brooks:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0706-010.html
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