Alyssa L. reviewed on + 6 more book reviews
Khaled Hosseini infuses Kite Runner with a wealth of individual characters of every stripe, and a subtlety and humanity that spans its pages from the first to the last. While I liked it slightly less well, Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns is an equally artistic work. Expecting that sort of depth and literary development, I ordered this book through Amazon's Vine program.
Alas, I must agree with two previous Vine reviewers: This book does not remotely fulfill its buildup. This is a shallow tale, laying totally flat and uninspired on its pages, populated by caricatures, not well-developed personalities with a genuine range of human emotion. Everything here is predictable, recited as if by rote.
The book opens into a 1941 November dawn pastoral scene in Ein Hod, a small Arab village east of Haifa during the olive harvest. Alas, the author almost immediately launches into statements on Muslim prayers and declarations of faith, painting the flimsiest of verbal landscapes. One might expect details of the sounds and sights on the land greeting local peasants, as they rise at 5 a.m. to reach their groves with baskets before their neighbors.
But one finds no landmarks described, no special home or grove, no familiar hillside. Instead, the author regularly splashes her first pages of prose with trite and formulaic phrases --- e.g. "noble fruit" and "sun-bleached hills" --- ringing hollow and false notes from the start. Already on page three, stick-figure characters begin insulting one another, albeit smilingly, but without explanation.
One begins to know the family with the introduction of the Bedouin girl Dalia, in chapter three. The friendship previously described, between Hasan and the crippled Ari Perlstein, whose parents settled in Jerusalem after fleeing from Germany, hangs on the weakest, most superficial language. It also puts words into Ari's mouth that no self-respecting young Jewish man, in 1942 Jerusalem, would have uttered.
Readers are supposed to believe that Ari, like all others who broach the topic in the first 25 pages, damns Zionists, considers them dogs and sons of dogs, and opposes a Jewish homeland, too. The author also implies that Arabs in Ein Hod thus far have been completely peace-loving and aliens to violence --- despite their rabid hatred of Jews, whom they freely label "Yahood, Jews, Zionists, Dogs, Sons of Whores, Filth" (pp. 24-25) --- entirely in keeping with the age-old jihad doctrine, especially fervent when directed at the Jewish people. Israel's creation had and has nothing whatever to do with its espousal.
Uneducated readers may be swayed by this one-sided portrayal of events. But by late 1947 and early 1948, Arab gangs had mass murdered hundreds of unarmed men, women and children in Jerusalem, Hebron, and villages throughout northern Israel, Etzion, the Jezreel Valley and east. Hitler's ally, Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin el-Hussaini, who sealed the mass murder of Hungarian Jews, also sought to slaughter all Israel's Jews. And in January 1948, Arabs cut the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem road. Their sniper fire indiscriminately killed everyone who ventured there. Even armored convoys and vehicles were dubbed rolling death traps.
The author neither relates these undeniable facts --- nor correctly recounts Ein Hod's early history. Ein Hod did not endure Roman, Byzantine, Caliphate, Crusader and Mamluk rule, as the author claims.
Actually, the village was founded in 1189 by Iraqis --- relations of Saladin's commander Hussam al-Din Abu al-Hija. In 1596, just 44 people lived there; by the late 19th century, Ein Hod was still home to only 50.
But the author's greatest outrage is her description of supposed July 24, 1948 events, purportedly derived from an Associated Press report of Israeli planes and troops launching "a massive artillery and aerial bombardment" in "an unprovoked attack."
In fact, Ein Hod's Arab residents had abandoned the village by May 1948, Benny Morris' inaccurate "reports" of "July 15" events notwithstanding.
One can forgive some historical inaccuracies in an historical novel. It's a novel, of course. And to be sure, there are some tender moments, when characters take on sympathetic personalities --- momentarily expanding beyond their straw-man frames. For pages at a stretch, readers can sometimes get lost in the story.
Then along come figures spouting hateful slogans and propaganda, such as the Arab epithets for Jews quoted above. The author also portrays ridiculous paper-doll Israeli soldiers, framed by nuns or nurses shouting that they're no better than Nazis. Thus I must also agree with other reviewers that descriptions here of Israelis are far from the reality I've experienced, even at the tensest of border crossings or check points.
Overall, the novel is weak and its historical spine, unconscionably lopsided. The frame upon which this author hangs her feeble "plot" is but transparent propaganda --- far from the artistic work the publishers promise, with all the subtlety and beauty of a club.
One must presume that, under its previous 2007 title, Scar of David sold poorly. Why else repackage a lame four-year-old book and hype it under such a dramatically different new title?
---Alyssa A. Lappen
Alas, I must agree with two previous Vine reviewers: This book does not remotely fulfill its buildup. This is a shallow tale, laying totally flat and uninspired on its pages, populated by caricatures, not well-developed personalities with a genuine range of human emotion. Everything here is predictable, recited as if by rote.
The book opens into a 1941 November dawn pastoral scene in Ein Hod, a small Arab village east of Haifa during the olive harvest. Alas, the author almost immediately launches into statements on Muslim prayers and declarations of faith, painting the flimsiest of verbal landscapes. One might expect details of the sounds and sights on the land greeting local peasants, as they rise at 5 a.m. to reach their groves with baskets before their neighbors.
But one finds no landmarks described, no special home or grove, no familiar hillside. Instead, the author regularly splashes her first pages of prose with trite and formulaic phrases --- e.g. "noble fruit" and "sun-bleached hills" --- ringing hollow and false notes from the start. Already on page three, stick-figure characters begin insulting one another, albeit smilingly, but without explanation.
One begins to know the family with the introduction of the Bedouin girl Dalia, in chapter three. The friendship previously described, between Hasan and the crippled Ari Perlstein, whose parents settled in Jerusalem after fleeing from Germany, hangs on the weakest, most superficial language. It also puts words into Ari's mouth that no self-respecting young Jewish man, in 1942 Jerusalem, would have uttered.
Readers are supposed to believe that Ari, like all others who broach the topic in the first 25 pages, damns Zionists, considers them dogs and sons of dogs, and opposes a Jewish homeland, too. The author also implies that Arabs in Ein Hod thus far have been completely peace-loving and aliens to violence --- despite their rabid hatred of Jews, whom they freely label "Yahood, Jews, Zionists, Dogs, Sons of Whores, Filth" (pp. 24-25) --- entirely in keeping with the age-old jihad doctrine, especially fervent when directed at the Jewish people. Israel's creation had and has nothing whatever to do with its espousal.
Uneducated readers may be swayed by this one-sided portrayal of events. But by late 1947 and early 1948, Arab gangs had mass murdered hundreds of unarmed men, women and children in Jerusalem, Hebron, and villages throughout northern Israel, Etzion, the Jezreel Valley and east. Hitler's ally, Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin el-Hussaini, who sealed the mass murder of Hungarian Jews, also sought to slaughter all Israel's Jews. And in January 1948, Arabs cut the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem road. Their sniper fire indiscriminately killed everyone who ventured there. Even armored convoys and vehicles were dubbed rolling death traps.
The author neither relates these undeniable facts --- nor correctly recounts Ein Hod's early history. Ein Hod did not endure Roman, Byzantine, Caliphate, Crusader and Mamluk rule, as the author claims.
Actually, the village was founded in 1189 by Iraqis --- relations of Saladin's commander Hussam al-Din Abu al-Hija. In 1596, just 44 people lived there; by the late 19th century, Ein Hod was still home to only 50.
But the author's greatest outrage is her description of supposed July 24, 1948 events, purportedly derived from an Associated Press report of Israeli planes and troops launching "a massive artillery and aerial bombardment" in "an unprovoked attack."
In fact, Ein Hod's Arab residents had abandoned the village by May 1948, Benny Morris' inaccurate "reports" of "July 15" events notwithstanding.
One can forgive some historical inaccuracies in an historical novel. It's a novel, of course. And to be sure, there are some tender moments, when characters take on sympathetic personalities --- momentarily expanding beyond their straw-man frames. For pages at a stretch, readers can sometimes get lost in the story.
Then along come figures spouting hateful slogans and propaganda, such as the Arab epithets for Jews quoted above. The author also portrays ridiculous paper-doll Israeli soldiers, framed by nuns or nurses shouting that they're no better than Nazis. Thus I must also agree with other reviewers that descriptions here of Israelis are far from the reality I've experienced, even at the tensest of border crossings or check points.
Overall, the novel is weak and its historical spine, unconscionably lopsided. The frame upon which this author hangs her feeble "plot" is but transparent propaganda --- far from the artistic work the publishers promise, with all the subtlety and beauty of a club.
One must presume that, under its previous 2007 title, Scar of David sold poorly. Why else repackage a lame four-year-old book and hype it under such a dramatically different new title?
---Alyssa A. Lappen
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