The World to Come

In the Yiddish folk tales that are woven through this magnificent book, the World to Come is a heaven occupied both by those that have passed on and those that have yet to be born. So Dara Horn writes about families and generations: elders who have passed on (or in some cases been eliminated), adults facing tragedy, finding new love, or conceiving new life, and children trying to figure out what it all means. One folk tale tells of a town where nobody ever dies, because nobody has really truly lived; throughout the book, Horn is concerned with the quality of living, with risk-taking, faith, and trust, and with authenticity in life or in art. This may sound abstract, but Horn's writing is far from it; her greatest gift is to plunge the reader into the souls of her characters, sharing their experience through their eyes, ears, and skin. In some ways, this novel reminded me of THE HISTORY OF LOVE by Nicole Krauss, another recent novel spanning several generations of Jewish families in Europe and America. Just as that was tied together by the fate of a manuscript whose history spans much of the twentieth century, so this also revolves around an artwork, or rather two of them: a small Chagall painting that is stolen from a New York museum at the start of the book, and some stories by the Yiddish writer Der Nister (the Hidden One), who ultimately met the same fate as numerous other Jewish intellectuals in Soviet Russia. Both art forms -- painting and folk tales -- offer ways of looking at the world that are instinctive rather than logical, childlike in their immediacy, and closer to religion than to fact. Both deal with other worlds. Many of the characters in the book are involved with the visual arts, but since this is a novel it is the stories that provide the connective tissue, offering a different way of seeing to stand against the many tragedies of the past century. As Horn acknowledges in the appendix, most of the stories are adapted from earlier writers, but her skill is to weave them into a narrative that links divers times and places in a web of feelings and perceptions rather than as points on the railroad of chronological logic. This wondrous novel seems to be at once totally original and to have existed for ever. I have to admit that my attitudes to the book went through some changes. I was put off reading it for several months because of the excessive cuteness of the original cover [I see it has now changed]. It was not until I got into it that I realized that this was an adult story, childlike at its best moments, certainly, but never childish. Once I had come to trust Dara Horn as a storyteller, I felt she could take me anywhere: to modern life in New York, the privations of an orphanage in Soviet Russia, the horrors of Vietnam, or the imagined world of folk tales going back centuries. I found myself telling everybody I met that this was something on the level of Paul Auster's ORACLE NIGHT, Myla Goldberg's BEE SEASON, the Krauss HISTOR

This is certainly one of the best books that I have read this year. The emotional impact of the book on me was similar to the one I got when I read "100 years of solitude "at the first time. When Marquez used Latin American folklore as the source for his imagination, Dara Horn turns to Yiddish literature - with astonishing results. I would not be surprised if after reading this book, some people would re-read (or read at the first time) Shalom Aleichem and other Yiddish masters. I personally went to browse through my art albums, to look at Chagal's paintings - and try to see them from the new perspective. Of course, the mix of magic and reality in "The world to come" is very different from the one the readers enter in "100 years of solitude". In Horn's "world to come" the reader is smoothly transferred from one point in history to another - from the realities of life of Jews in Stalinist Russia to the war in Vietnam, back to modern America and then to the mystic world of unborn people... And all those events, as well as the stealing of the Chagal's painting from the museum are only short stops on the eternal journey, when the traveler is seeking for the answer "What do we mean?" ... I appreciate that the author did answer this question. Very good book, highly recommended.

In the World to Come, Dara Horn manages to weave family history with myths of birth and paradise to create a beautiful tale. She begins with Ben Ziskind, who steals a Chagall painting from a museum when no one is looking. Ben is going through a bit of a personal crisis at the time, so it's unclear whether he is correct that this painting once belonged to his family or he is simply becoming delusional. We soon come to understand Ben, his motives, and his fears. Horn's real talent is the ability to switch between scenes, timelines and perspectives all while keeping the interest of the reader. In many novels I find myself slogging through certain parts, biding my time to return to the characters I truly care about. All of Horn's characters are interesting, and I relished all of them equally. Death is a common theme in the World to Come, and it is to Horn's great credit that her novel is nevertheless optimistic. The denouement may leave some readers craving for more details about exactly what happened next. That is Horn's plan, and she executes it with brilliance.

After reading "In the Image", Dara Horn's impressive debut novel, I could not wait to read her next creation. "The World to Come" exceeded my expectations! This beautifully written, multidimensional novel will have broad appeal to lovers of historical fiction, symbolic literature, mystery, romance and much, much more. The novel is deep and philosophical, but also is just plain fun to read with colorful characters and a suspenseful plot that smoothly carries the reader between different time periods and places. A lot of research obviously went into this work, and readers learn interesting, little-known facts about Marc Chagall's art, Yiddish literature, and Russian and American history by osmosis. What makes art famous and what does it mean to own it? How does our family shape our destiny? When do we encounter "the world to come"? The book touches upon these questions and leaves you with even more. I guarantee you will be thinking it over after you have turned the last page. That is the sign of a great novel, and this book definitely deserves your consideration. The most pressing question for me is ... when does Dara Horn's third novel come out?

Recently divorced, former TV child quiz show star and child prodigy Ben Ziskind is convinced to attend a singles mixer at the Museum of Hebraic Art, where he spies a small picture on the wall that used to hang in his boyhood living room. As the singles leave the exhibit area to listen to dance music, Ben steals the drawing, a Marc Chagall sketch, and starts an amazing collection of interwoven plots in this wonderful story. The plot lines jump back and forth to a 1920's-era Jewish boys camp in Russia, to Ben and twin sister Sara's childhood in suburban New Jersey, to Ben and Sara's father's tour of duty in the Viet Nam war. In an ironic twist, it turns out that Erica Frank, the beautiful museum employee who is put in charge of trying to find the stolen Chagall, is a huge fan of the children's books written and illustrated by Ben and Sara's mother, Rosalie Ziskind. Because of ther interest in the children's picture books, Erica makes the connection that Ben is the likely thief of the painting. The main plot dealing with the stolen painting is an excellent story, and the characters in this book are well-developed. As the story unfolds, author Horn includes various excerpts from letters written by the young Ben to his Russian "Bar Mitzvah twin", stories from the children's books, and other stories from the Yiddish author known as the Hidden One. (Benjamin's "Bar Mitzvah twin" turns out to play a significant role later in the story, another wonderful twist in the carefully interwoven plot.) In the end, all the various stories build upon each other and add up to a wonderfully written novel. I highly recommend this book, and look forward to reading Dara Horn's debut novel.