People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

I liked this book, but I’m slightly annoyed because I feel like I should have liked it more than I did, and that makes me like it less. That makes no sense, I’m sure, but there it is.

People of the Book is a mostly fictional story about the Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. The book existed, and so did some of the events the author includes, but it’s mostly fiction. In the novel, a rare book expert named Hannah Heath has been tasked with conserving the book in 1996 after it’s gone through the Bosnian War. As she finds bits of artifacts in the book ( a grain of salt, a piece of hair), the author shifts the narrative to the various peoples who possessed the book at some point.

“Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.” 

I liked all those bits fine. I found Heath’s process to be fascinating, all the techie book details, and the individual narratives were well done–the stories of the primarily Jewish people who came in contact with the book, and the horrors they endured, were extremely compelling. What I didn’t like occurred mostly in the last third of the book, so if you plan to read it (and don’t let me stop you; it was a perfectly good way to spend a few hours) stop here.

The last part of the book kind of devolves into a conspiracy theory in which Hannah Heath is convinced the book has been duplicated. She handles this very poorly, derails her career and then the story jumps forward in time about six years. It’s all wrapped up neatly, but I felt the ending was really out of place. It seemed to do a disservice to the people who suffered in the name of Haggadah by making it all about this rich Australian girl with mommy issues (oh! and she discovers she’s the bastard offspring of some famous artist! WTF?).

But still, an interesting read about a subject I knew little about. Three stars seems really appropriate here.