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Sto caricando le informazioni... The World to Come: A Novel (originale 2006; edizione 2006)di Dara Horn
Informazioni sull'operaThe World to Come di Dara Horn (2006)
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Horn's second novel tells a multi-generational story of a Russian Jewish immigrant family in the US, weaving between various time periods and centering on each of three consecutive generations. It centers on the third generation in the present, Benjamin Ziskind and his twin sister Sara, starting with Benjamin spotting a painting by Chagall that was once owned by his family and promptly stealing it from the museum. The book ends oddly, as did Horn's first novel, with a dreamy description of Sara's son in his pre-birth period, following an apparent talmudic or midrashic fable and learning about the world before birth, before he heads to the real world. Horn is a beautiful writer, and there are paragraphs in here that make the reader cry. I found much of the story depressing- the world to come might be great, but the world of the Ziskinds is no great shakes. And I'm not thrilled with the ending. I've now read four of her novels in quick succession, and I have to say that they get better as she goes- this is worth reading for sure, but later novels are better. Ben steals a small painting from a museum because it looks like the one his parents had in his childhood home. We follow the story of how the painting came into being and how Ben's mother Rosalie got it and why she sold it. Chagall had a colleague at a boy's orphanage where he was teaching and where Ben's grandfather was after the pogroms who stuffed his Yiddish stories into Chagall's frames. Rosalie found them later as an adult and published them as English children's stories--plagiarism or the survival of cultural heritage. The final chapter covers the pre-birth of Ben's nephew, as a "not-yet" child. Reminiscent of The Goldfinch. A non-linear plot, which makes it hard to follow. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Appartiene alle Collane Editorialibloomsbury taschenbuch (0529) Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioni
An intoxicating combination of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion, The World To Come is Dara Horn's follow-up to her breakout, critically acclaimed debut novel In the Image. Using a real-life art heist as her starting point, Horn traces the life and times of several characters, including Russian-born artist Marc Chagall and the New Jersey-based Ziskind family. Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy, now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben's twin sister, Sara, forces him to attend a singles cocktail party at a Jewish museum, Ben spots Over Vitebsk, a Chagall sketch that once hung in the twins' childhood home. Convinced the painting was stolen from his family, Ben steals the work of art and enlists Sara to create a forgery to replace it. While trying to evade the police, Ben attempts to find the truth of how the painting got to the museum. From a Jewish orphanage in 1920s Soviet Russia where Marc Chagall brought art to orphaned Jewish boys, to a junior high school in Newark, New Jersey, with a stop in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, Horn weaves a story of mystery, romance, folklore, history and theology into a spellbinding modern tale. Richly satisfying and utterly unique, her novel opens the door to "the world to come"--not life after death, but the world we create through our actions right now. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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The narrative is creative, weaving in ideas about life after death, creation of tombs, and even including several characters’ experiences in the womb. I found the first three-quarters particularly enjoyable. Toward the end, it veers off in a different direction. The ending….well, let’s just say it is most likely symbolic (or at least that is the way I interpreted it). Themes include love, loss, trust, cultural trauma, perseverance, storytelling, afterlife, and anti-Semitism. I liked the complex mix of elements, and I enjoyed the creativity, but found it difficult to maintain the same level of engagement toward the end. I think it would serve as an excellent selection for discussion in a book group or a subject for analysis in a literature class. ( )