GENRE: Realistic Fiction & Historical Fiction
People of the Book(paid link) is a pretty painful read … one in which I would not recommend. I truly could not finish it, which is an extremely rare thing for me.
It is about a girl named Hanna, who is a doctor that repairs and inspects ancient historical artifacts. She travels to Savarejo to inspect a one-of-a-kind Haggadah, that turned up after the war. It is a rare Jewish book that is used during psssover. Throughout the novel, it switches from Hanna’s present journey, to moments of the past that serve as explanations/stories for each new evidence she uncovers in the book.
Overall, it isn’t bad writing by any means, for I think that the form, diction, and sentence structures were very well executed. It is more an issue of plot. You would have to be extremely interested or knowledgeable about the history that the novel touches on, in order not to get lost or lose interest. For me, despite loving historical fiction, this novel was way to boring and lacked a connected, intriguing plot to move it forward.
The idea was there, but the execution was not.
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