Rating: 
Summary: GREAT READ!
Review: "In the Image" is a captivating and astounding first novel by Dara Horn! The author intertwines multifaceted characters into an inspirational story of love, life, and faith. I had a wonderful time reading "In The Image," and can not wait for Ms. Horn's second book!
Rating:
Summary: Nevermind the Bollocks
Review: A few reviews below appear to miss the point of this first novel. While "In the Image" certainly features an occasional wooden prose style, Dara Horn's debut may be the most exciting yet in a recent spate of young Jewish writers. Her book is wonderfully constructed (being a meditation on the nature of coincidence, events echo each other throughout the book). Furthermore, this novel is one of the most ambitious I've read -- far more intellectually adventurous and promising than Jonathan Safran Foer's funny, but ultimately shallow, debut. Skip around the first couple of chapters, and you'll be hooked!
Rating:
Summary: A Simply Phenomenal Book
Review: Dara Horn's book, In the Image, is one of those rare books that actually makes you feel like a slightly different person once you've finished reading it. The characters get under your skin and stick with you, changing you the way that meeting certain people does. In fact, the characters are so realistic, and the storyline so gripping, that at around 4:30 in the morning (I started reading one night and just couldn't stop), I looked up and wondered where I was. That's how absorbing this book is.One of the best parts about this book are the numerous bits of wisdom and startling observations that actually changed the way I look at the most mundane daily things. At one point, Horn observes that "...both babies and old people have such unbelievably tight grips with their hands. On the edges of life, everyone is afraid to let go." Breathtaking turns of phrase like this await the reader on every page. I firmly believe that Dara Horn will be the Saul Bellow of this generation. If you're going to read one book this year, or this decade, or frankly, in your entire life -- I highly, highly recommend that it be In the Image, by Dara Horn.
Rating:
Summary: absolutely fantastic read
Review: From start to finish, this book was absolutely unbelievable. This is the first time I've ever posted a review on Amazon, but as I'm so taken with the entire book-- its characters, its setting, the intricate web of plots that Horn weaves-- I felt I had to. It had been such a long time since I had read a book so deeply emotional, spiritual, and page-turning. That it comes from a debut novelist is unbelievable!
I felt like I knew these wonderful characters as intimately as I know my own husband and children. The book even made me reconsider my own relationship to religion (my husband is Jewish). I am absolutely insisting that my book club reads this book next-- it merits a second, third, and fourth read, it's that interesting.
If you're searching for a new book that really makes you think, this is it. It was an incredible read start to finish-- I never wanted it to end.
Rating: 
Summary: Contrivance par excellance
Review: Horn is clearly not guided by life experience but is using the novel to try to make herself look like a work of erudition, worldliness, & intrigue. Another in the Allegra Goodman genre. Recommended for those who know little about Jewish history and various forms of Jewish religion.
Rating:
Summary: What an incredible story!
Review: I just finished reading Horn's _In the Image_ and was so moved by it I am writing a review-- for the first time ever--on Amazon. I wanted to write a review of it because I enjoyed it so immensely, but am finding it difficult to express my experience in words because it is one of the few books I have read in my life that has so deeply affected the way I look at the world. The character development in this book is so delicately crafted I felt like I actually knew the characters as intimately as I know my own husband and children. The stories-- which take place in the WWII Europe, contemporary New Jersey, and turn of the century New York-- are so beautifully (and often surprisingly) intertwined that reading this novel has made me wonder how my life connects to those of the people I see everyday. And the biblical imagery and allusions throughout are so lyrical and thought-provoking that I'm even starting to think about my own personal relationship to Judaism in a new light (my husband is Jewish). Without question, this is the best book I have read in many, many years. That it comes from a debut novelist is positively extraordinary!
I can't wait to read it again with my book group this coming November (I've absolutely insisted that we read it), and I recommend to anyone who seeks a fascinating and completely page-turning read to buy Horn's _In the Image_.
-Helen Greene
Rating:
Summary: Stunning literary achievement
Review: I must say, in the absence of overzealous marketing, I simply did not know to expect so much from this outstanding debut. (This book thankfully does not seem to have fallen victim to the overhyped and often misleading marketing campaigns so typical of young debut novelists.) But it deserves all the attention and praise of the year's "hot new fiction," and then some. I was stunned by this young author's ability to apply her real wisdom and appreciation for history, culture, and literature, to an engrossing story that flows across generations and continents. Every line seems imbedded with literary or philosophical meaning that becomes palpable as you near the second half of the book, culminating in two final chapters that are shocking in their originality of style and substance. It is a story that will speak to anyone, whether young or old, Jewish or not, someone out for a "literary" experience, or someone just looking for an enjoyable book that leaves you with many things to think about even as it entertains with its mysteries of character and faith. The layers of the story make this a book you can enjoy again and again as you reread it (I am halfway through my second reading). One criticism, though, is that it takes until about the third chapter for the author's full momentum to get going. But once you realize how the chapters start inter-connecting, the effect is staggering, sort of like a mystery you didn't realize was being woven all around you. Going back to re-read all the things you miss on the first pass feels like a guilty pleasure. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: I reserved this book from the library from a newspaper book review which strong recommendationed it. And I can only say WOW. It's impressive. I'm not a literary scholar, I just like books and movies that take you someplace you haven't been before with real life characters. (Those with good and bad personality traits.) Dara Horn has done just that with an enormous amount of research and knowldege on history and places. Dara Horn has captured the real feelings of normal people. She's written two wonderful love stories in this book. She shows so much maturity in her characters and research that I am continuosuly amazed that author could only be 25!! Read this book before they ruin the story by making it into a movie.
Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: i thought this book was absolutely terrific! if this is the way horn writes at twenty-five, i can't even imagine what she'll be like at fifty! such lyrical prose-- both touching and funny at moments--only a truly gifted writer can write this way without any inkling of pretension. interesting insight into the world of jewish mysticism...certainly this warrants a second read.
Rating:
Summary: terrible
Review: I tried to get into it but just couldn't! I heard about the huge advance and wondered what all the fuss was about. Quasi-mystical, with a very stiff style, the book was just...not good. Read Foer instead.
|
