2.5* stars
thematically, this was a beautiful, although melancholic, literary novel that left me wanting a lot more. i throughly enjoyed the first half and thought mandel was creating a lot of interesting threads that would come together at the end but i felt it was extremely anticlimactic. in general i just think this was an extremely dull book. fantastic writing yes but very boring. none of the characters were particularly interesting and none of the plot points were very engaging. i also thought the positive language used towards israel was suspicious at best which only become worse after i finished the book and looked at mandel’s history of traveling to israel consistently for holiday and seemingly having done nothing in the wake of israel’s ongoing genocide. not a book ill think much about after reading or would recommend to others.