More like 3.5 stars. 4 for the occasional well turned phrase, 3 for the story and dialogue. A better family drama than Zoë Heller's The Believers, but inferior to Zeruya Shalev's The Remains of Love, to cite recent examples. Note on the audiobook: when a book makes frequent use of foreign vocabulary the narrator should be bilingual in that language as well as English. The Hebrew word for hike is pronounced tee'ool not tye'ool. The male narrator uses an annoying falsetto for female voices. Since the female characters in this book have more lines of dialogue than the men the audiobooks narrator should have been a woman. One more good edit from a fact-checking stickler would have helped this book immensely. I was distracted by outright errors such as a pear tree that is blooming AND has edible fruit in early July. (And this wasn't magical realism, just a mistake.) Interesting characters, though, particularly the sister who moves to Israel and becomes orthodox. I finished this book to discuss it at book club. I may not have finished it if I didn't feel that obligation. As another member of my book club said: "Meh."
What do You think about The World Without You (2012)?
Poignant view of the inner dynamics of a family under stress
—Step28
Good read, though a lot of it was predictable.
—jburnleyfc
