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People of the Book: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $6.65
You Save: $19.30 (74%)
New (61) Used (67) Collectible (29) from $6.65
Rating:  149 reviews
Sales Rank: 5739
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 067001821X
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780670018215
ASIN: 067001821X
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, January 2008: One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008. --Mari Malcolm 
Product Description
From the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated manuscript through centuries of exile and war
In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient bindingan insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hairshe begins to unlock the books mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the books journey from its salvation back to its creation.
In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his life to protect it from the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siecle Vienna, the book becomes a pawn in the struggle against the citys rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saves it from burning. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadahs extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed. Hannas investigation unexpectedly plunges her into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics. Her experiences will test her belief in herself and the man she has come to love.
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is at once a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity, an ambitious, electrifying work by an acclaimed and beloved author.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 144 more reviews...
 Disappointing January 5, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was, surprisingly, a bad book. The main character was highly unlikable and never grew out of her unlikability, and all the other characters seemed like cardboard cutouts who never came alive. The dialogue was stilted and the historical vignettes never really seemed like more than fingernail sketches; I couldn't get into anybody's stories. Finally, each of the "revelations" about the book were heavy-handed and carried out with creaking slowness.
People of the Book January 3, 2009
I was surprised at the end of the book to find out that this author also wrote The Year of Wonders which I did not enjoy at all. I'm glad to say I had a much higher opinion of this book.
As I was reading the book I alternated between thinking this was a great book and thinking I would never get through it. Each chapter told a short story that explained each artifact that Hanna found. Like when she was pursuing the clue about the insect wing we got a short story that went back in history to explain where the wing came from. I found some of these stories gripping and I couldn't wait to finish them and others felt like they were dragging on.
I know that this is supposed to imitate real life so of course not everything would be explained but the book left me wanting more. I wanted to know what happened in between each short story. Where did the Haggadah go from Father Vistorni's hands? How did the deaf-mute boy end up bartering away his copy of the images when we last saw him safely ensconced with his family? Where did Zahra go?
All in all even with the slow parts I would recommend this book.
 Too Gruesome January 2, 2009
Well, call me a weanie but I didn't finish this book. To be sure, it is beautifully crafted and well written, but each of the stories is more depressing and more gruesome than the last. When I got to detailed descriptions of the Inquisition, I put this book back on the shelf for good.
 Not Good Enough for Readers of the Book January 2, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book is a good story, full of everything I like: history and mystery, religion and bravery, and a good dose of female heroism. But the chapters read unevenly, with fast-paced and engaging passages followed by leaden and cliched portrayals, especially the chapter devoted to the Jewish Partisans fighting under Tito and the absolutely ridiculously written chapter set in turn of the century Vienna (the dialog alone, both the interior words of the narrator and the words he exchanges with others, had me hooting in disbelief).
Not that any of Brooks' writing is entirely free of cliches or hackneyed phrasing and pacing. Her writing is suitable to the telling of a story but not for sketching a genuine moment in time or expressing an original vision of the past. She does not open anything up to her readers that is particularly new or beautifully acute and accurate. Nor is Brooks much good at character development: her figures tend to be just that, figures meant to represent a certain type of person or a certain place in time. Even her narrator is a flat and unbelievable structure (common to best sellers) and the narrator's mother and recently discovered father, even worse. Everything is in superlatives: uber-successful surgeon, famous and fabulous artist, most determined restorer of books with a PhD from Harvard (of course) willing to spend months and months learning how to make parchment (or grind berries or whatever), and yet the world's meanest mom (and youngest chair of the neurosurgery department) gives her not one damn iota of respect. Etc., etc. Subtlety is not one of Brooks' virtues: she likes to slam us over the head with her characters and the situations they find themselves in.
But Brooks is a fine historian and she gathers together a lot of good facts; she is a good story teller, capable of wrapping those acts in a drapery of fun and froth, or blood and gore. I would guess that the best chapters -- the ones most true and moving and fresh -- are based on her favorite, if not best, areas of research. She herself admits it is hard to tell again the story of Jewish persecution under the Nazis and she does not do a good job of it. In contrast, the initial chapter set in Sarajevo in 1996 was very real and alive, and I loved the chapter set in Seville in 1480 (although should not the setting have been Granada? That is were the Emir lived, and I believe Brooks is referring to the beautiful Alhambra which is in Granada and not in Seville, as the place where the slave girl is sent to paint the Emir's lover). Despite the gaff in location, that chapter was rendered with a lighter touch, and a richer emotional range (if we ignore the rape scene and the totally unbelievable lesbian interlude) than any of the other historical chapters. In addition, the heroine of that chapter actually seemed like a living and breathing person, not some Madame Tussaud wax figure.
Brooks' book has a good story. I wish she could have trusted all of us more to tell the story without telling us what we should think; I wish she could have given us more complex and real characters we could have identified with and cheered on; and I wish she had offered a fresh and meaningful observation into why we should not be burning books, but reading them. Her main characters profess to love books -- to be People of the Book -- but we never find out why.
For more reviews, go to www.readallday.org
 As mesmerizing as the cover art January 1, 2009
This book is the author's best book. As with her other books, her voice immediately immerses the reader in the story. But the strength of the story interwoven among the story of the prior book's owners is a wonderful creative flair that Ms. Brooks has not previously shown us. Read this to find out what has happened to the previous book owners, the history of Jewish people in Southern Europe, and an interesting Australian rare book expert.
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