By CLARE McHUGH
January 16, 2008
A cursory description of Geraldine Brooks's "People of the Book" (Viking, 384 pages, $25.95) might make the novel sound like a distaff, Jewish version of "The Da Vinci Code." That's because Ms. Brooks, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her last novel, "March" (2005), has now produced a historical mystery starring a strong-willed heroine determined to ferret out the truth about a valuable medieval Hebrew manuscript nearly lost and then found again in war-torn Bosnia.
In reality, "People of the Book" is of much more substance than Dan Brown's overwrought, silly, and ultimately distasteful thriller could ever hope to be — yet Ms. Brooks's work is just as entertaining. She has accomplished something remarkable, fashioning a story that is compelling and eminently readable, even as she maintains high intentions and an earnest purpose.
As it follows the imagined journey of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated prayer book containing the order of the Passover Seder, "People of the Book" says much about the science of book preservation, about the nature of art and beauty, and about the capacity for barbarism in individuals who are sure they have a monopoly on truth. Tracing the past of this beautiful relic and through it the progress of Jews in Europe, Ms. Brooks skips around from the 14th century to the present day, with stops in Spain, Venice, Vienna, and the Australian Outback. She throws in a romance, a sudden inheritance, and a skillful forgery, yet through it all, the novel retains its essential seriousness. Here, history is more than a way to create rollicking plot points or sell books — Ms. Brooks is delicately but inventively pleading for tolerance.
We're first introduced to the heroine, Australian-born Hanna Heath, a scholar of ancient manuscripts, in Sarajevo in 1996. Hanna has been called in by the United Nations to inspect the condition of the Haggadah, which had gone missing four years previously from the city museum's library during Serbian shelling, but has now been recovered. "A famous rarity, a lavishly illuminated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind," the Haggadah had caused a sensation when it emerged in Sarajevo in 1894; "its pages of painted miniatures had caused art history texts to be rewritten."
Once Hanna is able to get a close look at the book, she discovers some oddities about it that set her on the trail of its true origins. The saga of the Haggadah through history is unveiled through a series of portraits of people who touched it, going backward in time. And Hanna's own story is told in intervening chapters. Because the novel lacks the traditional detective story structure — one clue does not lead inevitably to the next — the reader is pushed off balance, encouraged to ponder wider themes instead of mere facts on the ground. What is more, the reader ends up knowing more than Hanna ever does about the Haggadah, which is exhilarating and satisfying.
January 16, 2008
A cursory description of Geraldine Brooks's "People of the Book" (Viking, 384 pages, $25.95) might make the novel sound like a distaff, Jewish version of "The Da Vinci Code." That's because Ms. Brooks, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her last novel, "March" (2005), has now produced a historical mystery starring a strong-willed heroine determined to ferret out the truth about a valuable medieval Hebrew manuscript nearly lost and then found again in war-torn Bosnia.
In reality, "People of the Book" is of much more substance than Dan Brown's overwrought, silly, and ultimately distasteful thriller could ever hope to be — yet Ms. Brooks's work is just as entertaining. She has accomplished something remarkable, fashioning a story that is compelling and eminently readable, even as she maintains high intentions and an earnest purpose.
As it follows the imagined journey of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated prayer book containing the order of the Passover Seder, "People of the Book" says much about the science of book preservation, about the nature of art and beauty, and about the capacity for barbarism in individuals who are sure they have a monopoly on truth. Tracing the past of this beautiful relic and through it the progress of Jews in Europe, Ms. Brooks skips around from the 14th century to the present day, with stops in Spain, Venice, Vienna, and the Australian Outback. She throws in a romance, a sudden inheritance, and a skillful forgery, yet through it all, the novel retains its essential seriousness. Here, history is more than a way to create rollicking plot points or sell books — Ms. Brooks is delicately but inventively pleading for tolerance.
We're first introduced to the heroine, Australian-born Hanna Heath, a scholar of ancient manuscripts, in Sarajevo in 1996. Hanna has been called in by the United Nations to inspect the condition of the Haggadah, which had gone missing four years previously from the city museum's library during Serbian shelling, but has now been recovered. "A famous rarity, a lavishly illuminated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind," the Haggadah had caused a sensation when it emerged in Sarajevo in 1894; "its pages of painted miniatures had caused art history texts to be rewritten."
Once Hanna is able to get a close look at the book, she discovers some oddities about it that set her on the trail of its true origins. The saga of the Haggadah through history is unveiled through a series of portraits of people who touched it, going backward in time. And Hanna's own story is told in intervening chapters. Because the novel lacks the traditional detective story structure — one clue does not lead inevitably to the next — the reader is pushed off balance, encouraged to ponder wider themes instead of mere facts on the ground. What is more, the reader ends up knowing more than Hanna ever does about the Haggadah, which is exhilarating and satisfying.
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