People of the Book (Amy)
I have read one other book by Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders, which I liked, so I had high expectations for this book.
When I first started reading People of the Book I was sure it was on track to be one of my top reads of the year. There were places where I stopped to make notes of things that I wanted to remember:
“Of course, a book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand. The gold beaters, the stone grinders, the scribes, the binders, those are the people I feel most comfortable with. Sometimes, in the quiet, these people speak to me. They let me see what their intentions were, and it helps me do my work.” - People of the Book, pg 19
“All of you, from the safe world, with your air bags and your tamper-proof packaging and your fat-free diets. You are the superstitious ones. You convince yourself you can cheat death, and you are absolutely offended when you learn that you can’t. You sat in your nice little flat all through our war and watched us, bleeding all over the TV news. And you though, ‘How Awful!’ and then you got up and made yourself another cup of gourmet coffee.”-People of the Book, pg 37
However, somewhere in the middle the story just started to lose momentum for me and I started to have trouble keeping the different storylines straight.
I love the concept of a story told about an ancient text and I felt like I got a good snapshot of what was going on in each time period I visited. For that reason alone, I am glad I read this book. I love history. However, I found that the characters in some instances were not what I was hoping they would be and I was disappointed.
Maybe my expectations were too high but this was just okay to me. (3/5)
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