Book of the Week: The World To Come

Sorry that this week's book is being discussed on Thursday rather than the typical Wednesday, but as I mentioned earlier, I was in the ATL for a job interview--which, you'll be pleased to hear--I just found out I got!!! So three cheers to me for being newly employed at a dream job that involves designing interiors for hotels around the country. Huzzah!

But back to why you're tuning in: the book of the week. I know at least one of my loyal followers joined me in reading The World To Come, by Dara Horn, and I look forward to hearing from her as well as anyone else who has tackled this magical work. So, you might be asking, what did I think? Well, that's a tricky one. On one hand, I felt that certain images were a little too heavy-handed, certain references too redundant, and certain plot lines too neatly packaged. But on the other hand, what a brilliant, bittersweet examination of life and how we choose to live it, and even how we might enter in and out of it.

So let me break down these juxtaposing critiques of the book. First, the aspects that didn't thrill me: sometimes I think artists can be a little too forceful with their images, wanting to make sure the reader sees the symbolism they've worked so hard to create. While I appreciate their support, sometimes it's nice to feel like you, the reader, have made these connections on your own, that you are getting the author's point rather than having him or her hand it to you on a platter. Perhaps the best example I can give is in the book's suggestion that the little dimple above our lips is from angels: the story goes that right before we are born, an angel presses the spot above our lips like a secret to wipe away all memories of the "world to come," that is, the world we exist in before and after death. Beautiful image, don't you think? I certainly did the first time I read it, but the problem becomes that Horn continues to reference this spot--every story embedded within the novel mentions it, every character's little lip dimple is accounted for, even drops of paint splatter onto portraits of people right in that very spot above the lip and below the nose. So much for subtlety. Sigh.

In spite of this lack of nuance, there was a lot to love about The World To Come, including the title's reference. What is the world to come? Well as Dara Horn discusses in an interview, it can mean a lot of different things to different people: "To one person, it might mean a life after death; to another, it implies an age of redemption; to someone else, it's simply the future in everyday life. This book suggests that all of those possibilities are actually more similar to one another than one might imagine." Mmm, I love that. I think that--especially towards the end of the book--we start to see all these different interpretations of the world to come and how they might interrelate in a very rich and meaningful way. The parts of the novel that take place in the world to come are hands-down my favorite, but then again I'm a big fan of that mixture of magic and wonder with the everyday.

Speaking of that mixture, this book was interesting to compare to other works by young Jewish fiction writers, including Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, and Nicole Krauss' History of Love.

All three of the above works have a sort of magic to them, they all blend lesser-known historical tragedies with modern day events, and they tend to have a nesting doll quality to them, where stories reside within each other, opening up to reveal new secrets and new understanding. To be honest, while I felt like Horn did a great job here constructing a meaningful network of stories, for me this book didn't have quite the same ease and grace that EII and HOL had. In summary, if you did enjoy this book, then you should definitely check out Foer and Krauss, because they are absolutely incredible!

Finally, don't forget that this week's BOW is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Also, I have selected Zadie Smith's On Beauty for the following week, which I really hope you will enjoy; it's a "transatlantic comic saga" based loosely on E.M. Forster's Howard's End, an absolutely marvelous book in its own right.