Man, this book was overwritten. I think Horn must have intended it to be exclusively read by high school freshman literature classes. In fact, I believe that to such an extent, I feel a little bad about not writing this review as a five-paragraph essay. "How could that be a bad thing?" You might ask. Here's an example: Horn wanted to do a modern retelling of the story of Joseph and Judah. Great, fine. Classic stories have meaning in our time and all that jazz. But Horn worried that we might not get how clever she was being. So she named her Joseph character "Josephine" and her Judah character "Judith" and had them literally go to Egypt. The Tamar stand-in? "Itamar," of course. We're too stupid to catch anything less on-the-nose. (By the way, this lead to a hilarious and bizarre passage in which we were supposed to believe that a character whose last name is "Ashkenazi" -- to contrast her husband, Mr. Mizrahi, of course -- convinced an entire room of people that she wasn't Jewish, without pulling out a fake name.)

At times, it seemed that Horn was so hellbent on literary cleverness that I completely lost track of what she was even trying to accomplish. The Mizrahi/Ashkenazi naming quirk mentioned above, for instance, or why asthma is a recurring theme.

The central concept of the book -- do literal memories help us, or simply accumulate like sacred trash in a Genizah, was possibly interesting, but again dealt with in such a heavy handed way. The computer program to accumulate memories is called genizah, leaving no doubt to the reader what Horn what the reader's opinion to be and then layered with the additional stories of Rambam and Solomon Schecter and their interactions with the Cairo Genizah.

All in all, the extremely clumsy writing was so distracting that I got barely anything out of this book, but for the group that sent it to me, the PJ Library, a charity encouraging the modern Jewry to retain ties to their Jewish roots, that's probably right up their alley. I was shocked when I realized it actually was picked up by a formal publishing group outside of the Jewish world; I have no idea who else would read it.

Finally, I feel the need to be consistent in my complaining about the use of non-English languages, even though in this case, my Hebrew comprehension is good enough that it didn't personally affect me. Non-English languages should be used in English books only to set tone. If important information is conveyed it should be translated into English. Obnoxiously Horn walked all over that opinion: she both had important conversations carried out in transliterated Hebrew (which also, ugh! Those of us who understand Hebrew understand, so if you're going to be that obnoxious, go all the way and just use Hebrew characters) and then totally banal things unnecessarily translated, like "'sweetie', he called to her in Hebrew" ( )

Reading Dara Horn's "A Guide for the Perplexed" has left me sufficiently perplexed. I'm glad I read the book but I'm also glad I didn't have to read this in school and satisfy the teacher somehow that I knew what the "theme" of the book was. On one hand, novels (like this one) that use interwoven stories across centuries as a device always interest me, because I'm always interested in connections, and parallels. But I had believed, based on the book's description, that technology would play a greater role in the story. Instead, technology was more than counterbalanced by a focus on people, their relationships, why they love and why they hate and why they envy and why sometimes the universe just doesn't make sense to them. How is it that good fortune comes to some but not others? I can say I certainly didn't anticipate the twist of fortunes that bring the novel to a close.

Philosophy plays a key role in this book, underlying all the interrelated timelines of events. And because I had a hard time grasping more than a surface-level understanding of the philosophy, I can't help but wonder what I might have missed that was important. And did I miss what I did because of my own ignorance, or because the author didn't make things sufficiently clear? If I'm left perplexed, whose fault is that?

Perhaps a Cliff Notes booklet analyzing this book could be a guide for the perplexed who have read "A Guide for the Perplexed." ( )

Beautiful book set in three time periods- the main story, in the present day, is about Josie, a brilliant and beautiful high achieving American woman and her older sister Judith, a relative failure, always in Josie's shadow. A second thread follows Solomon Shechter in around 1900 as he learns of and takes into position a trove of ancient documents in a "genizah" in Cairo. Among those documents are some written by Maimonides, the great Jewish scholar of 12th century Egypt, and the book also devotes a few chapters to an imagined life of Maimonides and his brother David, a merchant.

Josie's story is fiction, while the other two are mostly accurate historically. Josie is kidnapped in Egypt while working there, and Judith struggles with her own complicated feelings about her sister. While being held, Josie reads a copy of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, and muses about the role of God in the world.

The story is really about sibling pairs- Josie and Judith. Solomon Shechter and his twin brother in Israel. Maimonides and his brother David. And one more sister pair revealed late in the book that I won't spoil. In the Afterward the author talks about how this was really her version of the biblical story of Joseph- I see how that fits, in that Joseph was hated and envied by his brothers, as Josie is hated and envied by her sister.

Beautifully written, a compelling read. ( )

Very nicely split between three different time periods, yet all well-connected, after a bit, and excellent women's points of view without being overtly feminist. Very very nice example of female solidarity across religious and maybe even class lines.
I love her veiled critique of our modern social media which creates a tendency to wipe out 'real' memory, that is, to wipe out our own personal memory of events or people after 'posting' memories or photos to the internet. Very good effective arguments in favor and against the possible uses of any given technology, and excellent reversals of the roles of the older/younger siblings, echoing the classic sibling rivalries throughout the Jewish Bible. And most chilling ending, after the amazing sacrifice near the end. Very well done. ( )

Slight SPOILER: While the rest of the book was interesting, what I found most important was the very end: In many stories and in real life, we often want to paint a false, pretty picture of a person and his or her relationships with others, not realizing the negative consequences of doing so. To not spoil everything in this story, let me give an example from another one: A man meets the woman who had an affair with his father when he was a child. She tells the son that they broke up because the father loved his family too much to stay with her. Actually, she broke off the relationship. The problem is that the son had grown up feeling unloved and rejected (as he should have) and now was being told that his view of the world was wrong. ( )