Reading

I think that this article is fascinating: Does Your Language Shape How You Think? The one class I regret not taking in college is Linguistics. But the way people think, and how language shapes worldview, has always fascinated me. The article is long, but very much worth reading.

So last week I finished two books on my list, sent by Gwen in a long-ago package. Harem by Dora Levy Mossanen was only okay. It was about three generations of women in Persia, the mom in the Jewish quarter, the daughter in the royal harem, and the granddaughter in court. It was an intriguing premise, but had way too much magical realism in it for me to fully get into the time period. I wouldn't recommend it.

On the other hand, The World to Come by Dara Horn was nothing short of amazing. I can't say enough good things about it. So I won't: I'll let the Amazon review say it for me.

Following in the footsteps of her breakout debut In the Image, Dara Horn's second novel, The World to Come, is an intoxicating combination of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion. 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, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam an eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on earth.

At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who 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 wrongfully taken from his family, Ben steals the work of art and enlists his twin to create a forgery to replace the stolen Chagall. What follows is a series of interwoven stories that trace the life and times of the famous painting, and the fate of those who come into contact with it.

From a Jewish orphanage in 1920s Soviet Russia to a junior high school in Newark, New Jersey, with a stop in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, Horn takes readers on an amazing journey through the sacred and the profane elements of the human condition. It is this expertly rendered juxtaposition of the spiritual with the secular that makes The World to Come so profound, and so compelling to readers. As we learn near the end of the beautiful tale, "The real world to come is down below--the world, in the future, as you create it."

Her language was also beautiful in itself, reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje. Read The English Patient just for the way he describes a peach. Dara Horn is a worthy successor.