After Nitro’s enthusiastic recommendation, I felt little choice but to run out and get a copy of Dara Horn’s The World to Come. If you’re a fan of Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer, you need to sprint to your favorite bookseller and pick this up ASAP. Horn’s style, grace, and magical writing fits comfortably along side these literati, and she deserves to be as well known.
Nitro’s post did a great job of summarizing the general plot. If you’re wondering what the book’s “about,” it’s about: family, the loss of language and culture, art, literature, war, the immigrants’ experience, color and beauty, what happens to us when we’re gone, what happens before we’re born, genius, loneliness, love, heartbreak, and it features several “real” and fictional Russians - which is always up my alley.
I second the recommendation. Check out the first chapter, if you are so inclined (scroll on down to the bottom).
February 28th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Glad you enjoyed it. And even better - you’re making progress in the female author category.
Do you think Dara knows Krauss and Foer since they are all Brooklynites? Get the scoop at your Brooklyn literary fest.
February 28th, 2007 at 10:27 am
I’m heading to the Amazon.CA site - sounds like a good one.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:39 am
N: I’ll have to ask my hip new book publishing firends tonight. Thanks for the ice-breaker.
Beth: I need to set up an Amazon.ca affiliate account! Don’t forget to tell them that I sent you.