Rating: 
Summary: Bravo
Review: This is a memoir of incredibly honest and bravery. It's also a fascinating exploration of an important topic. And it reads like a thriller, pages turning until the incredible ending. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: I will tell all my family and friends about this one
Review: This is a wonderful book! The author takes what she (and most readers) would consider a relatively black-and-white concept (revenge) and brings all of us along on her amazing journey, both literally and figuratively. The ultimate realization is that revenge is anything but simple, may not even bring satisfaction, and might not even come about in the form we want it to. If anyone from Hollywood had tried to write that astonishing courtroom scene, they would have flubbed it badly. A terrific read.
Rating:
Summary: So important now
Review: This is a wonderful book. The writer, a Jewish American journalist, goes on a personal mission not of revenge, in my opinion, but of reconcilation between Palestinian and Jew.
In an historical moment where Jewish and Arab tribalism are triumphant, Blumenfeld achieves the wisdom that is understanding that there is no way to peace. Peace is the way. (AJ Muste). Sharon and Arafat would not like this book. It is for those of us desperate to escape the insanity that will, if left unchecked, destroy Israel and Palestine both.
Rating:
Summary: Comfort and Transformation in a Brilliant Book
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read about the personal impact of violence on an individual. However, instead of my comments, I would like to forward a quote from an article that appeared in Newsday on April 2, 2003. The article is about a good man named Arie Bucheister who was gunned down, senselessly, while at work in his store. His wife, Beth, talks about the lessons learned and the comfort she has gotten from Laura Blumenfeld's book, "Revenge."
"If anything was on Arie's mind, Beth said, she was unaware. He had not seemed troubled when he left New York. There was no sense that he was afraid or anxious.But he had been reading a book that may have put him in a pensive mood. "Revenge: A Story of Hope," by journalist Laura Blumenfeld, is an account of the author's search for the Arab man - a militant member of the Palestine Liberation Organization - who shot and wounded her father, David, a rabbi, during a trip to Israel. Though Blumenfeld, who grew up on Long Island, was at first consumed by anger, "Revenge" shows how the writer's fury was transformed. Beth said the story resonated with Arie. "Now that I've read that book, I know I have lived my life the right way," Arie told Beth. Blumenfeld's exerience confirmed Arie's notions of basic decency, Beth said, and emphasized his conviction that "teaching each other right from wrong does make a difference." By the time he completed "Revenge," Arie was in tears, Beth said. He died a few days later - shot in his office, door open, believing the best." Copyright (c) 2003, Newsday, Inc. Clearly, this book will have a major impact on every reader. --------------------
Rating:
Summary: A Transcendent Revenge
Review: Twelve years before Laura Blumenfeld wrote this book, a Palestinian gunman grazed her father's skull in a botched attempt at murder. Her subsequent desire for revenge slowly, suspensefully, becomes a magnificent tale of personal growth, insight, compassion, humor, and tragedy. The book is also a nuanced examination of the human desire for revenge from the myriad perspectives of different cultures. Blumenfeld, a young Jewish American woman, travels back to Israel with the inital idea of becoming friendly with the incarcerated shooter's family. After gaining their confidence and winning them over on a personal level, she hopes to then reveal her identity to them and then revel in their guilt, anguish and mixed emotions. She tells us of this project and letters that she writes to the shooter to gain insight into why he shot her father and how he feels about it now. It is a cat and mouse game, in which she tries to gain his confidence while hiding her true identity and yet at times she wonders if he is playing with her. Blumenfeld is also a newlywed at the time and we see the effects of what she is doing on her husband, an account often oddly but touchingly humorous.They love to tease each other. At one point, her husband buys a chicken from an Hasidic Jew to slaughter and give to the poor as part of a sacrificial ritual of atonement for past sins. Amidst her husband's difficulties in dealing with the resistant bird, Laura asks him to explain the purpose of the ritual and then says to him the chicken functions like Christ at the crucifixion. He warns her that if she does not stop bugging him he will end up henpecked. Blumenfeld's research project also affects her parents estranged relationship in an eventually positive manner. Blumenfeld goes on to explore revenge rituals in which agrieved parties defuse potentially violent responses. She interviews interesting people like Vitka Kovner, a Holocaust survivor who plotted to poison the German water supply after World War II but who had very rigid boundaries about what she considered ethical. One moment of irritation I had in reading this book was when Blumenfeld refers to Allah as the god of the Moslems. Surely she knows better than this; that part of the tragedy is that both Moslems and Jews, despite significant theological differences, worship the same God and share many of the same Biblical stories. Was this just her anger and alienation coming through at this early stage of the story? I will not reveal the book's ending and the courtroom drama of the shooter but it is definitely worth reading. Though the central action rises out of a political situation, Blumenfeld seeks a personal understanding of what took place. She does give us insights into the Jewish desire to fight back, to not be suckered into a passive victimhood, and how that motivates Israeli politics. I was not aware before reading this book that that revenge for murder is an important motivating factor in the increase of Jewish West Bank settlements. If there is a shortcoming to this book, it is perhaps the failure to explore more wide ranging solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its seemingly endless cycles of violent revenge fueled by the tragic events of the recent past. Nevertheless, this is a beautiful and hopeful story arising out of ugliness and despair. If it inspires even a few individuals, it will be well worth the sacrifice of Blumenfeld's actions and writings.
Rating:
Summary: A Case Study in Rising Above Primitive "Need" for Revenge
Review: We say we are too civilized to want revenge, and instead call it "justice", but until we analyze all aspects of this primitive and destructive tendancy, we are only fooling ourselves. Laura Blumenfeld does exactly that. In a writing style that suggests a conversation with the reader over a cup of tea, the author traces her thinking processes regarding her perceived need for revenge against the backdrop of culture and family. Openly recognizing the contradictions within herself and her value system, she is able to become a thinking, evolving and compassionate human being. In response to a violent act against her father, she sets out to examine ways in which she might get revenge against his attacker and others who were involved indirectly. (Interestingly, her father has no interest in revenge himself and serves as one of many consultants for her.) Along the way, however, she must confront her own mistaken perceptions, her lack of understanding of the values of others, and the reality that good and evil are often in the eyes of the beholders. Questions about the ethics of her concealment of her identity are raised and one must ask if the ends in this case do justify the means. Some parts of her writing do make her seem incredibly naive, but I found that this allowed me, as a reader, to appreciate the full value of what she was thinking and doing. While she concealed much of who she was to the individuals she was interviewing in the book, she does not conceal anything about herself from the reader. We can identify with her and hopefully see that her message is useful in all our lives. "Revenge is useless" and "forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves." (often repeated quotes...original source unknown to me.) I was not expecting the photographs I encountered midway through the book and finding them at that point was a powerful experience. Please, if you read this book, don't look at them until you reach the middle of the book. They were the icing on the bittersweet cake. The choice of forgiveness over revenge is one we are hearing about more and more if we are paying attention, however this book goes into details that are left out of the accounts we read about in the news or hear about on television talk shows. It is time to change our thoughts about revenge and make it a thing of the past. Every situation offers us the choice of acting out of love or out of fear. This book shows how one person arrived at the right choice in extraordinary circumstances.
Rating: 
Summary: Hopeless Inability to See Another People
Review: When I first heard about this story, I was touched and impressed by Blumenfeld's bravery and audacity. But listening to both her and her father on NPR and then on the News Hour, I began to have serious doubts about the usefulness of this book in the current situation. David Blumenfeld's way of recounting the event made me feel that there was a disconnect to the whole story. He told Fresh Air's host, Terry Gross, that no one helped him after the shooting, and when asked whether the people around him were Palestinian or Jewish, he replied: "At the time there was no Palestinian, they were Arabs". This was 1986. The comment (slip of the tongue?) left me wondering to what extent Laura herself recognizes Palestinian rights. This books leaves me with serious doubts. The human element of the story - the exchange of letters, visiting "the shooter's" family, even trying to obtain his release! - is touching, but Blumenfeld gives short shrift to the political element. Who can disagree that, to paraphrase her father, 'if you get away from the politics, then you can see the humanity and identify with the situation of the other in the moment?' It sounds great, but given the unresolved political problem that is taking away the humanity of a dispossessed people (the Palestinians), and perhaps provoking a regional war, I can't consider a book that doesn't deal with this human/political problem to be "a story of hope." I look for writers who can help me to arrive at a deeper understanding of that problem. If this is the best Americans can do, then I see it as a story of hopelessness.
Rating:
Summary: Humanity, Courage, Forgiveness, and Hope
Review: [Audio edition, abridged] As a work of fiction, this nicely bridges the psychological drama and the suspense novel, and proves you can write an interesting tale without explosions, betrayals or mayhem.
While perhaps not as well crafted as Fuentes or Marquez, the author creates a disarmingly flawed heroine, who nonetheless becomes endearing. The theme of "is the world essentially good or bad?" is well dramatized, and the climactic courtroom scene as suspenseful and dramatic as a prime-time thriller. A "ripping good yarn", especially considering the themes of family values, hope and peace.
It will be interesting to see what further works this author creates, and how her craft progresses.
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