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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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The World
to Come by Dara Horn |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Authenticity Dara Horn’s second novel, The World
to Come, combines a family story with spiritual longing and produces a
result that will captivate many readers. Protagonist Benjamin Ziskind longs to restore the missing pieces of his life,
represented by a Marc Chagall artwork that he steals from a museum. Following
the theft, we learn about the Ziskind’s, Chagall,
and the plight of Russian Jews in the Soviet era. Throughout the book, each
character develop, the plot lines interweave, and
the differences between the fake and the real are revealed. Here’s an
excerpt, from the end of Chapter 3, pp. 46-50: That night Sara was
radiant. Her radiance came from confidence, from a failure to care about what
anyone else thought of her, and Ben envied her for that. She was a doctoral
student in art history and an artist herself, ten minutes younger than Ben,
and she wasn’t what anyone, other than people who knew her well, would call
attractive. Tonight, for example, it was clear that she hadn’t been teaching,
only working alone: her right hand was encrusted with blue paint, and her
hair was pulled back with a white garbage tie. But Sara had the kind of
beauty that would sneak up on you, catching your eye only when you saw her
burst out laughing, her blue eyes crinkling into dark slits in her face, or
when you saw her with her head dipped into a book, her perfect fingers
resting on the pale nape of her neck, or tracing the edge of her forehead
where you could see the tiny dark brown hairs emerging from her skin, held
in absurdly straight lines by her tight ponytail until they were allowed to
race into wild curls. And then you couldn’t believe that you hadn’t always
thought she was beautiful. They were long past the
point where they bothered saying hello to each other. Even phone calls
between them generally started with a brutal question, going straight for the
jugular. This time, she looked around the room, kicking lightly at the piles
of questions on the floor. She plucked one off the rug, read it, and smiled. “The
Book of the Dead,” she
said. It was the answer to the
mummy question. “You’re an American Genius,” he told her. She snorted, then glanced
at Ben’s lap and smirked. “How’s the book?” He slammed it shut on his
knee, trying to think of an obnoxious retort. But he found that he couldn’t
even growl at her the way he wanted to. He couldn’t help it; he was still
smiling. Sara looked him in the
face. “What’s so funny? Did you meet someone at the museum?” Ben glanced at the mirror
built into the wall behind his sister, and saw what Sara had not yet noticed:
the painting resting on the bed behind him. And then all of his usual
resentment of Sara — of
her talent, of the competence that made their mother give her power of
attorney, of her brilliant marriage to the brilliant husband whom Ben himself
had long ago deposited in her lap—evaporated. Tonight, at least, he was the
one with the bigger news. Ben turned to the treasure
lying behind him, picking it up and turning back toward Sara as he stood,
holding it against his chest. “Do you recognize this?” he asked. It took her a moment to
respond, and when she did, it was as if someone else were speaking in her
voice—as if, Ben thought, she were only a shell of herself, and the real Sara
was floating freely around the room. “From the house,” she murmured. Ben
grinned as he watched her gazing at the painting, mesmerized. It was a long
time before she looked at him again. “You bought a copy of it?” “It’s not a copy. It’s the
one from our living room,” he said. “Look, you can even see in the corner
where you smeared nail polish on it.” Sara leaned toward him and
peered at the painting’s corner. “Oh, God, you’re right,” she breathed, and
stayed there, staring at it. “Where did you find this?” “On the wall in the
museum.” “What?” “It was part of the
exhibit.” Sara snapped her head up
and stepped back until she had her back against the wall. She stood there,
silent. “There weren’t any alarms
or anything. I was kind of surprised.” Ben watched her face
tremble as she struggled to speak. An eternity seemed to pass before she managed
to form a word. “Ben, this is a crime,” she said slowly. “A crime. This is
not like shoplifting in a drugstore or something. You’re going to go to jail
for this.” “Only if I’m caught.” “Only if you’re caught?”
she shrieked. He ignored her, turning the
painting back toward himself and sinking to the
floor. Sara squatted beside him, still fuming. He pretended to be entranced
with the painting, avoiding looking at her until she glanced away. Sara
leaned her head back against the door and stuck out her lower lip, blowing
air up toward the loose hairs on her forehead to make them fly. Sitting on
the floor with her, Ben suddenly had the strange feeling that they were eight
years old again, when sitting on the floor was completely expected, admiring
a painting which, he had to admit, could have been an eight-year-old’s work. A vague memory entered his mind of sitting
with her on the floor like this once, using paints to cover the wall of her
room with fake paw prints, until their parents discovered them. The warm wave
of longing that ran through his body embarrassed him. But Sara was still shocked.
“You can’t just—you can’t just—” “Why not?” Ben asked. “You
mean it’s wrong for me to steal it, but when it gets stolen from us, then
that’s perfectly—” “You know we can’t prove
that,” Sara interrupted. “And even if we could—” Suddenly Ben slammed the
side of the painting down against the floor. The man in the painting lay
prone, rattled but intact. “Sara, I’m sick of it!” he shouted. The pitch of
his voice surprised even him. It was the way he should have shouted at his
wife, but he had never had the courage. “I am sick, sick, sick
of having things taken from me. Don’t you get it? Our family is finished,
Sara. This is the one thing we have left.” He took a breath, and the man in
the painting shuddered. “You know you only came here to talk to me about
selling the house. There’s nothing left anymore.” The man in the painting
trembled beyond Ben’s squinting eyelids. But Sara’s body was solid and
steady, barely moving as she tilted her head back against the wall. “I didn’t
come here to talk about the house,” she said. Ben swallowed, feeling
blood thumping in his neck. “What do you mean?” “I came to tell you that
I’m having a baby, my dear dumb brother.” She smiled, and then, when Ben
didn’t say anything, began to laugh. Ben stared at her, watching
her laugh and wondering if it was some kind of joke. But as he raised his
eyebrows at her, he saw her nodding her head, her lips trembling. “Leonid is working late
tonight, but I couldn’t wait to tell you. I’m due right after Passover.” It was a long time before
Ben was able to speak. His shock slowly dissipated into a thin, wavering
jealousy, blurring the air in the room. The whole world was leaving him
behind. When his voice finally came loose from his throat, he tried to
congratulate her. Instead he blurted, “But Sara, are you—are you sure?” “Of course I’m sure.” He stuttered, choked, struggling to find something to say, anything
that would hide how he really felt. “No, I know, but it’s just—I mean, you
just got married, Sara. Are you sure you wanted—” Sara looked up at the
ceiling, and Ben suddenly noticed a drop of pale blue paint in the dent below
her nose. “We planned it that way,” she said softly. “I was hoping that Mom
would—” She looked at her hands. “Well.” Ben looked at his sister’s
hands, and then glanced again at the painting. God, he thought, a baby. And
their parents, who would never see it. But a baby. For all of them. Still sitting on the floor,
the two of them embraced — or,
really, the three of them embraced. In her arms Ben stammered his congratulations
and then fell silent, sensing the presence of the new person, the not-yet
person within her. The three of them held each other, dreaming unborn
dreams. Sara stood up, as if
breaking a spell. She picked up the painting and placed it carefully on the
bed. “They’re going to come after you for this,” she said. “You need to take
it out of your apartment. Stash it somewhere else.” “Where?” “Anywhere, just not here. I
don’t want you in jail when the baby comes.” The baby. “Don’t worry, we’re going to figure out a way to get you out of
this.” Ben grimaced. “It’s our
painting. You can tell me whatever you want, but I’m not going to turn
anything in—not the painting and not myself. Just try and make me.” But
already all he could think about was the baby. “Just try and stay out of jail,” Sara said. Long after she left, Ben lay on
his bed and suddenly found that he couldn’t sleep. Instead he imagined
himself flying, gazing at the ground far below and seeing, from his aerial
view, two paths out of the necropolis that might not be dead ends. Horn’s writing
can become predictable, and that may distract some readers, as will some
facts that she seems to need to plant whether they make a difference or not. The World
to Come opens a reader’s imagination to the differences between the real
and the imaginary, the authentic and the forged. The characters are well
developed and the story is memorable. Steve Hopkins,
April 24, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
World to Come.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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