Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
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I always feel nervous when I read a Pulitzer Prize winner and I don't enjoy it. I think, "What am I missing? Am I not smart enough to appreciate this or what?" I loved the premise of this book but not the execution. The story follows all of the lives who have touched a sacred Jewish text called the Sarajevo haggadah, from hundreds of years ago when it was created, through World War II, to the present day. I love that premise, almost like the premise of Ken Follett's book The Pillars of the Earth which followed the lives who had touched the building of a single cathedral.
But the stories left me flat. I'm not sure if it's the horrific violence and torturing of the Jewish people, the details of which are included so graphically, or the specific dehumanizing of women in the book, or the main present-day character of Hanna who is so unsympathetic that put me off. But I never got hooked. I kept hoping to feel something like attachment to anyone, and it didn't come. This may be a flaw in me, and not the writing, but I owe you my opinion - and The People of the Book just didn't delight me in its language or even engage me in its plot.
I do not understand the comparison to The Da Vinci Code other than the surface similarity that ancient secrets are at the heart of it. There is no suspense here and no pulling for characters on a quest. I give a lukewarm review to The People of the Book.
