... It's a murky, rambling, frustrating book. Though I suppose it might appeal to some people who can put up its dense style, keep in mind it's certainly not an easy read.

Besides the style, the content is also bizarre. As a religious Jew myself, I expected to identify with this book. Nothing could be further from the truth. The characters are obsessive-compulsive, unhappy and fanatical, and Judaism's appeal to the main character seems to be in providing a set of rules and prayers with which she can torture herself. The book's religious references seemed arbitrary to me - Govrin quotes a mish-mash of Jewish prayers at random - and her description of one of the rabbis goes totally against traditional Judaism. (Govrin doesn't seem to have a problem only with Orthodox Jews: her secular characters are equally odd and unbelievable.)

I can't believe this book won the Israel Prize - ... I also wonder if this translation is off.

How on earth did this book ever get published. I don't know whether it's the translation that's the problem or whether it just needed a much better translator and editor. It's all over the place and while I enjoy a surrealistic or experimental approach I think this needed a good edit or rewrite or a better translator. I found much of the imagery etc in it jarring and it just didn't work, in English anyway. It seemed like a work in progress by a student of creative writing.

I think it had a lot of potential - the author has done a lot of research and put an enormous amount of work into it, but quite frankly I got about 1/3 of the way thru it and gave up. I'm glad I didn't buy it but borrowed it from my local library.

I recently saw the author on a panel discussion at a Writer's Festival and did expect something better from her writing.

Naomi Lyons

I think this book is more slow than a turtle. When I read the book description I was very interested and I bouth it, but it turn out that this hole book could have been said in just one chapter. I had the impresion that I was not moving on with the story as I kept reading. There was way to much description and no dialogs at all. To coplicatly written and if the author tried to say something here I did not andurstand what it was.