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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love in a Coffin, August 29, 2009
This review is from: Drawing in the Dust (Hardcover)
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Drawing in the Dust tells the story of Page Brookfield and her search for life's meaning in ancient ruins in Israel. Page is an archeologist whose father died when she was young. Since his death, she has been focused upon her work and denying herself a normal life of love and family.
Page, after 13 years working at sites in Israel, takes advantage of an opportunity to dig beneath the house of an Arab couple who believe that significant relics reside there. Page agrees to investigate.
There is much to enjoy about this novel. Zoe Klein paints pictures in exquisite detail of the archeological dig. We witness the slow careful uncovering of relics and the excitement and joy of each of the prized pieces. I liked the constant reference to Biblical history and Page's regular utterance of relevant Biblical versus.
Drawing in the dust is a multilevel love story. Jeremiah, the Biblical prophet and Anatiya, his lover, died in 556 B.C. and were buried together in love.
Inspired by the spirit of love released when the coffin of Jeremiah and Anatiya is opened, suddenly the world appears to be in love.
While working together, two couples fall in love and challenge cultural barriers. Dalia, a Jew and Walid, an Arab, become lovers and marry. Page, a Christian, and Mortichai Masters, an Orthodox Jew, begin a relationship that must overcome both tradition and prejudice.
I found several faults with Drawing in the Dust. Zoe Klein struggles in drawing a modern female character. Page Brookstone is a flesh and blood woman who is professional, emotional, and often timid. Page, an archeologist specializing in Middle Eastern cultures, continually demonstrates professional competence by directing others in the intimate details of gently digging artefacts and identifying relics. But Page is clearly a female stereotype who is attracted and distracted by males, becomes frustrated but passive with male barriers, and frequently is pictured as reacting in a lame, non assertive manner. She frequently avoids confrontation and often seem to collapse and place herself in compromising situations. With minor revisions, Page could have been an exciting character.
Many scenes in the story seem irrelevant or have irritating loose ends. Once Page is assaulted but we never learn why. In another scene Page, without provocation, decides to hide under a sink. In a third, although Page is sought by New York police, she calmly go to the airport, flies to Israel and police involvement somehow ends.
Drawing in the Dust is potentially a significant novel, I rate it four stars.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting concept developed in a flawed manner--WARNING: Spoilers, August 2, 2009
This review is from: Drawing in the Dust (Hardcover)
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I was initially intrigued at the concept of this novel: The skeleton of the prophet Jeremiah is found, together with that of a woman. Along with them are found three scrolls: the biblical books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, and a scroll written by the woman, Anatiya. However, as I read the book I found a number of artifical twists and finally, toward the end, an episode of pure insanity on the part of the protagonist, Page Brookstone--an episode that strikes the reader as quite out of character and artificial. I had been debating between three and four stars until I got to this episode; then the debate was between one and two stars. I reluctantly decided to be nice and give it two stars.
The book features many quotations, long and short, from "The Book of Anatiya." It turns out that author Zoe Klein has actually written a book by this title, a kind of female reflection on the book of Jeremiah. It is an intriguing concept, though the text is not entirely convincing as Semitic poetry of that era. However, I can give the author a pass on this. I can even give her a pass on not answering the burning question that pops instantly into the mind of any Bible scholar: Did the scroll of the book of Jeremiah found with him have the long version considered canonical by Jews and Western Christians, or the short version considered canonical by Orthodox Christians, which is found in the Septuagint and at least one Hebrew manuscript among the Dead Sea Scrolls? These are interesting matters, but not very material to the plot of the book, which I will now summarize.
Basic plot: Archeologist Page Brookstone is in her twelfth year digging at Megiddo, and it is getting boring. Along comes an Arab couple with a haunted house who convince her to take a look under it. They find a coffin with the skeleton of Jeremiah entwined with that of a younger woman. They also find the three scrolls mentioned above. People go nuts. Orthodox Jews think it is sacrilege to disturb the skeletons (which are hauled off to a museum for proper processing). Jewish and Christian groups are scandalized by the sensuality of the Scroll of Anatiya and the fact that it shows the Orthodox belief about the origin of Deuteronomy to be false. A cabal of international types connive to keep the scroll locked up in committee for decades, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Page sneaks good photos of the entire scroll out of Israel. A group of fanatics steal the skeletons of Jeremiah and Anatiya, and in the process destroy half the scroll of Anatiya. Suddenly Page is a heroine instead of a villain for having photographed the whole scroll. Page and a couple of her friends have a vision that Anatiya's skeleton will be incinerated. Page becomes desperate to avoid this. She makes her way by night to the only crematorium in Israel, where, sure enough, Anatiya's skeleton is in a wooden coffin about to be burned. While the evil men about to do the deed step out of the room to wait for a few cronies, Page GETS INTO THE COFFIN TO KEEP ANATIYA COMPANY WHILE SHE IS BURNED. Page and Anatiya are rescued at the last minute and everyone acts like everything is back to normal. All through this there has been a prickly quasi-romantic relationship between Page and an Israeli anthropologist named Mortichai Masters. The complication: he is engaged to be married to a widow to whom he was engaged 25 years earlier but who was married off to another man while Mortichai was in the U.S. for college. The man recently died and Mortichai thought it was his duty to marry his former fiancee--until he met Page, that is. Page and Mortichai finally get together in the end.
As you can tell from the capital letters I use above, the episode that absolutely drives me crazy is Page getting into the coffin. Instead of making the slightest effort to rescue the skeleton or to call anyone on her cell phone to come help, she turns off her cell phone and gets into the coffin, hoping the bad guys won't notice her, so she can peacefully burn with Anatiya. This is so utterly insane and so out of character for Page that it completely kills the book for me. The fact that this act of suicidal insanity is totally forgotten by everyone immediately after she is rescued is also completely non-credible.
A number of plot elements in this book are quite credible, particularly jealousy among scholars and overreactions by religious zealots. But the book is marred by several artificial plot twists worthy of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." In a couple of places I wrote "Conflict ex machina" in the margin, and in one place "ARTIFICIAL plot prolongation!" There is also a scene (pp. 243-47) in which Page and a married couple carry on a very intimate, emotion-laden conversation in front of the couple's two children--wholly inappropriate and completely unnecessary for the plot. (There is an infant as well, but since he can't understand the conversation his presence is not a problem.)
All in all, while the concept that sparked this novel is quite good, its execution is marred by too many serious flaws for me to be able to recommend it.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing love story of many levels, June 27, 2009
This review is from: Drawing in the Dust (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Each night I fought off sleep as I read long past "bedtime" and hated to put this book down and turn out the light. While not accurate from an archeological or anthropological perspective this beautiful story of many intertwined levels and plots enthralls us with the many loves and many losses of Page Brookstone.
After almost 15 years working the same, now boring, site in Israel, Page is forced to leave to retain her sanity and flee a "wanna-be" lover. Drawn to a site that every other scientist has shunned, she makes an astounding discovery tantamount to the Dead Sea Scrolls -- A cavern that enchants all those near it with deep love for another, often socially inappropriate, lover. Page is caught up in the enchantment, falling in love with her discovery, those she meets there, a former lover and taking enormous risks to save its truth.
While the archeological work described here would take years rather than weeks, and the care for the artifacts have been much more intense than described, we get a very real sense of how politics and personal striving have changed the Bible, the Torah, the Koran and, indeed, history as we know it. This is a deeply thought provoking novel that will make the reader question what they really do and have loved, what they will risk for all the loves of their life and whether history is really what we think it to be. A very worthwhile read that is highly enjoyable!
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