Read Holy Lands A Novel Audible Audio Edition Amanda Sthers Jess Einstein Suzanne Toren Emily Lawrence Josh Bloomberg Peter Berkrot Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Books

Product details Audible Audiobook Listening Length 3 hours Program Type Audiobook Version Unabridged Publisher Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Audible.com Release Date March 26, 2019 Language English, English ASIN B07Q1DLL84

Holy Lands A Novel Audible Audio Edition Amanda Sthers Jess Einstein Suzanne Toren Emily Lawrence Josh Bloomberg Peter Berkrot Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Books Reviews

• I love this book!!!! It’s like Jane Austen meets 84 Charing Cross RD. Meets Israel.
  I fell in love with the book from page one. Read it in one sitting! Could NOT put it down. Perfect size. Highly quality paper. And easy to read font. The story itself is ...perfection. It’s simply beautiful.
• This is counterintuitively very enjoyable while tackling a deadly subject. I didn’t expect the style of using letters to drag, but it really didn’t. The treatment of the Israeli Palestinian conflict is one of the best I have read
• Holy Lands is simply delightful. The messages of forgiveness and reconciliation are powerful, and the characters get there in the most delightful ways.
• The dialogue around raising pigs in Israel is quite humorous. The interplay between all of the characters reveals some of life’s most difficult feelings to express.
• Story moves fast, however a lot of character development left implicit. Interesting read but wish it delved more into the intricacies of the holy Land
• I started laughing and slowly one page after another I started crying.... The type of tears that make you want to call all your friends and your entire family to tell them YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!
• I'm not sure what readers French author Amanda Sthers was writing for in her novel, "Holy Lands". The book, which is being made into a movie, is a curious mixture of classic family dysfunction mixed with pork, used here as a seasoning. "Holy Lands" is set in both Nazereth, Israel (which is one of the few places in Israel where pigs can be raised), New York City, and. variously, Marrakesh and Paris. The characters flit between the cities with very little intention of acting as a family. Everyone's mad or disappointed with most everyone else and they find it easier to communicate by mail - either snail mail or, in some cases, email.
  
  There aren't very many epistolary novels being written lately. The best I can think of is British author Nigel Williams' sly and glorious novel, "Unfaithfully Yours", whose letters between characters are laugh-out-loud funny. Williams was able to concoct a fairly plausible plot point for why the letters were being written; Amanda Sthers' reasons for the letters is that Dr Harry Rosenmerck has moved to Israel to raise pigs and doesn't want a phone or a computer with email connection. And this inability to communicate in modern terms is devastating for the Rosenmerck family, which consists of divorced parents and two adult children. The children are almost caricatures of today's dysfunctional family members. David is gay and brilliant, but has problems communicating with his father who has practically disowned him. And Annabelle is the 30 year old "child", who goes through life, unable - or unwilling - to settle down and begin to embrace adulthood. These are characters seen in almost every book about dysfunctional families. The parents are divorced, which is, of course, the reason for their children's problems. (But being the child of a father-who-has-a-pig-farm-in-Israel can't be too helpful to family dynamics...)
  
  Okay, so Amanda Sthers book - which is quite short - is another book about a dysfunctional family with a failure to communicate. The plot has been a staple of literature since, like, forever, and has been done better before now. I can sort of recommend the book if you have some free time to begin to get involved with the Rosenmercks. Though, I'd really advise your picking up "Unfaithfully Yours" if you want to read an epistolary novel about dysfunctional people.
• “Does keeping the memory fresh prevent history from repeating itself? Surely not. Memories are meant to be forgotten. History is meant to be repeated. That of Jews, of women, of Arabs, of people who suffer, of Little Red Riding Hood. And the grandmother always, always has sharp teeth.”
  
  Seldom do I make a decision to read a galley based almost entirely on the book’s cover, but really. A dancing pig in the Holy Land? How can that story not be interesting? Big thanks go to Net Galley and Bloomsbury.
  
  The whole book is a series of letters and emails sent between five characters. We have four family members Harry and Monique are divorced, yet it’s one of those complicated divorces where there’s no clean break; David and Annabelle are their adult children. Harry is an American expatriate who has moved to Israel, but instead of embracing his culture and homeland in a more conventional way, he has opted to become a pig farmer in Nazareth, one of the few places in this Jewish nation where the animals are not straight up illegal. And so the fifth character is the rabbi, who entreats Harry to give up the pork business. He’s upsetting people, and he should respect his roots a little more. Jews have been through enough, nu? And before we know it, there’s mention of the Holocaust.
  
  Harry wants to keep his pigs, and he thinks it is time for Jews to lighten up about the Holocaust, maybe tell a joke about it now and then. The rabbi is floored. Joke? About the Holocaust? And so it’s on.
  
  You would think that with such edgy subject matter the story would veer over the boundary of good taste, but Sthers—who has many bestsellers to her credit, though this is her American debut—is deft, insightful and very, very funny. The prose is angry, hilarious, and aching all in turns, not unlike our feelings for our kin.
  
  Families are such fertile territory, and this one is among the best fictional families in literature. David, Harry and Monique’s son, is a gay playwright whose father has not come to grips with David’s sexuality. David writes him endless letters; Harry won’t respond. We see how Harry thinks and feels about David through his correspondence with the rabbi, and with the things Annabelle learns when she comes for a visit. Meanwhile, David’s new play is about to open, and it’s titled “Kosher Pig.” It’s about his father. Oh, how he wants Harry to be there for the opening! But Harry remains incommunicado.
  
  This is a slender little book, just 176 pages, and so I expected a casual romp, but it’s more than that. It’s a quick read, not because it’s lightweight literature but because it’s impossible to put down. I recommend you should get it and read it, and then…maybe you should call your parents. Better yet, go visit them.