When my MIL handed me People of the Book, she said, "It's like The Da Vinci Code, only lots better." So, when I opened the novel, I expected a globe-crossing, adventure/mystery exploring the origins of a historical object. Having read Geraldine Brooks' previous novels, I should have realized that I would be getting much more than a Da Vinci Code copycat; People of the Book is an original, compelling story and my favorite Brooks novel to date.
The story revolves around Australian Hanna Heath, a no-nonsense rare book expert, who is selected to participate in a career-making restoration. The object of interest is a 15th Century haggadah (a Jewish manuscript containing the story of the Exodus), illuminated in a curiously non-traditional manner. Hanna travels to Sarajevo to examine the treasure, which has survived despite massive shelling in Bosnia. While restoring the book's binding, Hanna finds a handful of artifacts - a white hair, a wine stain, a butterfly wing and salt crystals - which lead her on a journey across the globe to trace the book back to its mysterious beginnings.
Each artifact receives a separate chapter as the tale moves backward in time. We discover the significance of the butterfly fragment as a Muslim risks his life to save the haggadah from the Nazis. The wine stain takes us back to 17th Century Venice, where a Jewish rabbi begs a Catholic priest to save the book from the Inquisition's fires. As each clue illuminates a portion of the Haggadah's history, we see each hand that created it, loved it, and risked everything to save it. Although Hanna doesn't get as complete a story as the reader does, the deeper she delves into the mystery, the more her admiration grows for the incredible book; she can't wait to bring its remarkable history to light. On the eve of its public debut, however, Hanna discovers something that will shake her to the core. Is it possible that the treasure is only a brilliant fake? Will Hanna, like the book's previous protectors, have to risk everything to save the real haggadah?
People of the Book is a brilliant historical mystery, replete with danger, adventure and a cast of characters masterfully rendered. Like the haggadah itself, each character is plain on the outside - "nothing that an untrained eye would look twice at" (14) - but illuminated with colorful passions on the inside. Brooks picks each apart, showing their weaknesses as much as their strong devotion; Jews, Christians, Muslims, agnostics - all get the same treatment from their creator. Her point is super fine: Each person - despite his color, religion or creed - protected the book because it was the right thing to do. Brooks underscores her point at the end of the book when one of the characters says, "...To be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox" (361).
Weirdly, I found all of the charcters in People of the Book sympathetic and endearing except one: Hanna Heath. I disliked her on sight. Although I began to have some empathy for her - especially after meeting her mother - it didn't make me like her any better. It didn't help that dips into Hanna's personal life were mostly just awkward - especially when she suddenly discovers the secret of her father's identity - and distracted from the story.
Despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It requires more focus than The Da Vinci Code, but it makes Dan Brown's masterpiece look like the work of a clumsy child. People of the Book is like the haggadah itself - plain on the outside, but beautifully illuminated within.
Grade: A-

Because I have thousands of books on my TBR list, with more being added every day, I thought J. Kaye's new challenge - 100 Books - would be a good one for me. It's simply to read 100 books this year, which I was planning to do anyway. In case you didn't know, I keep a running list of books read in 2008 at the very bottom of my blog. I'm not doing too shabby so far, so hopefully this challenge really won't be much of a challenge at all. Thanks to J. Kaye for hosting!

I finished two books today, but I'm not going to post reviews on either one of them ... yet. Here's what I read:

• Kiss Me, I'm Single: An Ode to the Solo Life by Amanda Ford. It's an upbeat little book with a lot of wisdom packed inside - watch for my review and more info on March 5, when Amanda stops by for a visit.

• The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket. This is Book the Seventh in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series. The books are all pretty similar and there are 13 of them, so I thought I would wait and review the whole series when I finish it. It's such a fun, quirky series. I agree with the reviewer who called them "formulaic," but I'm still enjoying these quick YA novels.

• I'm now reading People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I've heard a lot about this one, and I can't wait to dive in. I enjoyed both March and A Year of Wonders, so I expect I'll like this one, too.

That's it for now. Keep the entries coming for The Bookseller of Kabul - I'm loving all of your comments!

Joe Harker - star of Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves - never set out to be a hero. All he wants to do is survive high school. If he somehow manages to earn a glance from pretty Rowena Danvers, well, that will pretty much take care of his life goals. Transforming from an average kid into an intergalactic warrior just plain isn't on his to-do list. But, here he is straddling all the dimensions of time and space to keep balance in the great, wide Alti-verse.


His adventure begins on an ordinary day that turns extraordinary pretty fast. Joe's Social Studies teacher, the eccentric Mr. Dimas, has dropped him and two others (the aforementioned Rowena and a jerk named Ted Russell) in an unknown section of town. Their assignment is to find their way back to the school within a certain time frame and without using a map. Oh yeah, and this is their final project. The test is not a good one for Joe, who gets lost in his own house. The challenge gets even more difficult when he discovers not only that he is lost - nothing new there - but more lost than just lost lost. In fact, he doesn't even seem to be in his own world anymore.

When Joe "cheats" and pays for a bus ride home, he stares out the window at the passing scenery. Everything has changed. Including his home and family. Then, a man in a mirrored mask steps out of the mist, creatures on flying disks appear out of nowhere, and Joe is running for his life from a seductive witch and her tattoo-covered henchman. It is only after Jay (the masked man) rescues Joe that Joe gets the truth: Joe is a Walker, a unique individual who can travel between worlds/dimensions. As such, he is hunted by enemies who want to harness his powers. His particular talents are also desired by the good guys of InterWorld Prime - the organization with which Jay works - who help maintain the balance between magic and science on all worlds.

Soon, Joe joins the good guys, landing in a sort of superhero training camp, where:

It was like being a new kid in a school you hated. Only worse.
It was like being a new kid in a school you hated that was run by the army on
vaguely sadistic principles, where everyone was from a different country and
they had just one thing in common.

They all hated you.

Once again, he's fighting for survival ... in school. And, once again, his "final" is taking him to places unknown. This time, it's a training mission in a (supposedly) controlled environment. When everything goes wrong, however, Joe is left to question his own heart, his own abilities, and his own courage. He must choose between a safe existence on his own Earth or a dangerous life Walking between worlds, a career path that is already paved with failure and death. For a guy who "had difficulty getting to the store on a two-dimensional grid life Earth's surface"(119), it's a decision that will change his life and those of all the various lifeforms on all of the Multiverse's various earths.

Although this book doesn't have the most original plot (an average kid learns he is anything but when his ordinary life goes all weird on him - even a sci-fi novice like me knows this one has been done before), but it has some really fun elements. The main character, for instance, is the kind of helpless underdog you can't help but love. He, and all the variations of himself he finds out in the Multiverse, are interesting although not always likeable. The book makes countless allusions to sci-fi classics like Star Trek (the retiarii's warning will sound familiar to anyone who's watched at least one episode), Lord of the Rings, and The Twilight Zone. Parts of it even reminded me of Stardust, my favorite Gaiman novel. For me, the most fun part was the character of Scarbarus - I love the idea of him being able to bring his tattoos to life.

Interworld offers a fun, if chaotic, mixture of magic, science and space exploration. It didn't wow me, but I enjoyed the story. If you like the Harry Potter books, The Lightning Thief and others, you will probably like this one about another ordinary boy who really ... isn't.

Grade: B