This was just as good as I remembered - and I'm glad that I was on hand to remember the title when a member of the book club was unable to decide what to choose for her turn.
Multiple stories blend together into a remarkable whole. As the present day researcher and conservator studies a five hundred year old Haggadah in a Sarajevo museum, Brooks opens windows into the history of the book. A fragment of a butterfly's wing from a species which only lives in the high alps, a wine stain mixed with blood, a single fine white hair - each sends the reader to another time and place with equally compelling characters. The researcher herself, of course, doesn't know the stories - only the reader knows.
The contemporary story alone has sufficient drama and mystery to warrant a complete novel. There we have a woman at odds with herself without actually knowing it. She is forced to confront herself on a number of planes and discover who and what she truly is.
The book of the title is the Sarajevo Haggadah, which actually exists and the rough outlines of its story are the framework for this one. Perhaps part of which makes this work so fascinating is the knowledge that the book actually is in that museum in Sarajevo. The story itself is fiction, but the book is real.
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