Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful thriller
Review: Gordon has mixed the history of art, Europe and Zionism to craft an excellent mystery thriller. While the pace is deliberate, the time Gordon spends explaining details of paintings, Nazi bureaucracy, the founding of Israel, and the cities of Paris and Florence is well spent, as the conclusion requires these details on physical and philosophical levels.
Details make for complicated decisions. Right or wrong is simple. Life is complicated.
On a side note, Gordon often quotes dialogue in French, Italian, Yiddish and Hebrew, but you do not need these languages to read the book as the dialogue's content becomes quickly appararent usually on the same page.
Rating:
Summary: My 2nd favorite book of all time
Review: Gordon outdoes LeCarre with this literate thriller. The writing in this book is absolutely first class!
Rating: 
Summary: Neil Gordon is the next LeCarre or Graham Greene
Review: I bought this novel mostly because of the title. Luckily the title only barely hints at the contents. Though this book does contain what one reviewer called "revisionist history", it isn't meant as a history text. It is meant as a thriller that gives you pause to consider moral issues.
Rating:
Summary: The Title Doesn't Begin to Describe What's Inside
Review: I picked up this book after loving "The Company You Keep," and wasn't all that excited about something that looked a bit too Chaim Potok-ish. But boy, was I happy to find a story that took the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis by he horns, and tackled the very complicated issues surrounding the creation & maintenance of a Zionist state. I almost couldn't believe this book ever got published. To some of my friends who only date "the right kind of Jews," these ideas would be grounds for treason!
The book did an excellent job of helping me to understand how I could feel so conflicted about my grandparents' dedicated involvement in selling Israeli bonds, given the viciousness of what's happening in Israel now. The moral dilemmmas posed were way beyond the typical mainstream mass media fodder, and I felt as though parts of my brain were being activated that hadn't seen any use since watching "Before Night Falls."
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Tale!
Review: I'm not alone as an American observer of what has been happening in Israel the last three years in feeling uncomfortable with the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis. I hadn't fully appreciated when I opened this book, how directly the author would address this issue as he tells the story of two disaffected sons and their relationship with a father who played a role in the founding of Israel. The discomfort of the sons with how the dream of Israel had turned into something less than noble, matches my own. Since so much of the novel explores the interior world of those who contribute to the unfolding of the story, one ultimately of betrayal, this book demands a certain care on the part of the reader both for the characters and for the larger issues being discussed. Personally, I was mesmerized by the story and the conflicted morality represented. Mr. Gordon weaves together the voices of the characters with grace, even as he richly evokes the circumstances in which they find themselves. The light, the rain, the shadows, the smells came alive for me as I dropped into the world he creates. This is fine writing that draws one into the mystery of what happened and why.As a footnote, I'll observe that it seems unhelpful to have reviews of different media lumped together. Comparing the experience of listening to an audio version of a book with the experience of turning the pages is, in my estimation impossible. That one review dislikes the inflection of a voice rendering dialogue means absolutely nothing in assessing the quality of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Tale!
Review: I'm not alone as an American observer of what has been happening in Israel the last three years in feeling uncomfortable with the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis. I hadn't fully appreciated when I opened this book, how directly the author would address this issue as he tells the story of two disaffected sons and their relationship with a father who played a role in the founding of Israel. The discomfort of the sons with how the dream of Israel had turned into something less than noble, matches my own. Since so much of the novel explores the interior world of those who contribute to the unfolding of the story, one ultimately of betrayal, this book demands a certain care on the part of the reader both for the characters and for the larger issues being discussed. Personally, I was mesmerized by the story and the conflicted morality represented. Mr. Gordon weaves together the voices of the characters with grace, even as he richly evokes the circumstances in which they find themselves. The light, the rain, the shadows, the smells came alive for me as I dropped into the world he creates. This is fine writing that draws one into the mystery of what happened and why. As a footnote, I'll observe that it seems unhelpful to have reviews of different media lumped together. Comparing the experience of listening to an audio version of a book with the experience of turning the pages is, in my estimation impossible. That one review dislikes the inflection of a voice rendering dialogue means absolutely nothing in assessing the quality of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: An exciting mystery for 2/3rds of the novel, but then drags.
Review: Neil Gordon has written revisionist history disguised as an exciting mystery. His hidden agenda contains the charge that the motive for bringing in illegal immigrants into Palestine during the war was to provide "canon fodder" for the forthcoming war against the Arabs. Benami is accused of condemning women and children to Hitler's death machine by changing names of exit visas to include only young men presumably able to fight in the Haganah. Moreover, all his references to the Jewish government are hostile. As a novel the story drags during the last 100 pages. The motives of an outsider, Chevejon, are obscure, even though his passion for helping Danni and Luke to uncover the actions of his father, Benami, drive the story. For me, the novel was a mixed bag.
Rating:
Summary: A Favorite!
Review: Neil Gordon's "Sacrifice of Isaac" is a compelling story which had me bound to the text until I finished it. In fact I had taken Gordon's novel along with me on the train to read while traveling to the Indiana Dunes from Chicago and once there found myself sitting on my grandmother's headstone in the Furnessville Cemetery inorder to finish reading a riveting chapter. A suspenseful narration that on occassion might make a reader stop to think about the world as we too often see it or have been taught how to preceive our own cultural environments juxtaposed to so many others. The book discussion group of Temple Israel in Miller Beach (Gary, Indiana) also chose Gordon's first novel as their summer reading selection, and I've sent copies of "The Sacrifice of Isaac" now available in paperback to friends, and they have all become fans of Neil Gordon's writing too.
Rating:
Summary: A Favorite!
Review: Neil Gordon's "Sacrifice of Isaac" is a compelling story which had me bound to the text until I finished it. In fact I had taken Gordon's novel along with me on the train to read while traveling to the Indiana Dunes from Chicago and once there found myself sitting on my grandmother's headstone in the Furnessville Cemetery inorder to finish reading a riveting chapter. A suspenseful narration that on occassion might make a reader stop to think about the world as we too often see it or have been taught how to preceive our own cultural environments juxtaposed to so many others. The book discussion group of Temple Israel in Miller Beach (Gary, Indiana) also chose Gordon's first novel as their summer reading selection, and I've sent copies of "The Sacrifice of Isaac" now available in paperback to friends, and they have all become fans of Neil Gordon's writing too.
Rating: 
Summary: No Carravagio
Review: RE: AUDIO CASSETTE VERSION. I don't demand Clancy action from a "LeCarre thriller" but this novel is peopled with soul-less characters waiting...and waiting.... Each seems to have been allocated one bold action then, having exhausted the quota, spends the remainer of the story speaking in trailing-off sentences. After slogging through all this slow motion until you want to slap them silly, the sins-of-the-fathers dark secret payoff has long since lost any impact. The two readers of the audio version only add to the tedium with the female contributing an unconvincing German accent.
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