| Normally when confronted with a family tree gracing one of the first pages of a book, it freaks me the hell out, and makes me want to throw it into a far corner and hide. There's just such an implied expectation of concentration. Personally, I find having to keep track of characters to that extent isn't relaxing, which is my primary reason for reading in the first place. Nevertheless, this book had been on my radar for a few months, so I decided to give it a shot and pretended to have never seen that daunting little diagram in the first place... The Solomon family in this book spans three generations, all who live in different parts of the world: California, New York and a kibbutz in Israel. Thankfully, although related, this is a very diverse group of family members, and most have some variation of eccentricities that keep things interesting and the story moving along. They each have a great personal struggle that they're trying to overcome. Although I generally read a book or two per week, this one unexpectedly took me longer than usual. I enjoyed the beginning (the California family intrigued me the most), then I sort of slowed down around the middle due to a busy couple of weeks and questioned if I was actually that invested in the storylines enough to continue on. After a mental coin toss, I decided to forge on and the last half went quicker. It turns out, I just need to read at my usual pace to keep on top of what's happening and not lose the plot. The characters, although they have ended up spread out across the world, ended up reuniting at the kibbutz and their stories intertwined and wrapped up nice and neatly. I was glad I kept at it. It turns out that little family tree diagram was pretty helpful after all and, hopefully like any good family, was not as daunting at it initially appeared. It helped to serve as a reminder when I came back to the book after putting it down for a day or two. In the end, I'm glad this one got rescued from a potential random dark corner. |
