Book #80: The People of the Book

Title: The People of the Book
Author: Geraldine Brooks

I'm a big fan of Geraldine Brooks's previous works of fiction, March and Year of Wonders, so it's no surprise that I also loved People of the Book. While Brooks's other novels have been strictly historical fiction, with settings far-removed from modern life, in this novel, Brooks blends both modern and not-so-modern, following the story of the Haggadah, an illuminated Jewish prayer book that survived several wars and hundreds of years and ended up in Sarajevo in the mid-1990s. The main story follows Hanna Heath, a book conservator called into assess the condition of the Haggadah. During her work, she finds several unusual items in the book, including a piece of hair, an insect wing and a wine stain. Brooks interweaves the story of each of those items along with Hanna's story. It's a pretty quick read, and very interesting, and of the same high quality as Brooks's other works. It's not completely cohesive, and a little but unfulfilling in that the readers end up knowing more about the book's history than the historians studying it, but it's still definitely worth the read, especially if you're a fan of Brooks's other works.