The Bone Weaver: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Unique, powerful, moving, and inspiring
Review:
Victoria Zackheim's The Bone Weaver is a superbly written generational story, told from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother, about their lives and problems in struggling to survive and endure in 19th century eastern Europe despite pogroms, diseases, and other ills that befall life in the Jewish shetl. The history of past survivors helps present day descendent Mimi Zilber better understand herself, where she comes from, and how to best set her sights on the future. The Bone Weaver is a unique, powerful, moving, inspiring, and very highly recommended novel.


Rating:
Summary: Unique, powerful, moving, and inspiring
Review: Victoria Zackheim's The Bone Weaver is a superbly written generational story, told from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother, about their lives and problems in struggling to survive and endure in 19th century eastern Europe despite pogroms, diseases, and other ills that befall life in the Jewish shetl. The history of past survivors helps present day descendent Mimi Zilber better understand herself, where she comes from, and how to best set her sights on the future. The Bone Weaver is a unique, powerful, moving, inspiring, and very highly recommended novel.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: A gorgeous, deeply moving exploration of grief and the stories that ultimately sustain us. Zackheim plumbs both the inner and outer worlds with great sensitivity and grace.

Rating:
Summary: Superbly written
Review: I adored this novel. I was lost in the world of these three powerful women and the threads of their lives. Psychologically astute and beautifully written, this makes me long for more works by the talented Zackheim.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious read
Review: I really wanted to like this book -- in fact, I wanted to love it. Instead I found myself sunk in a repetitive bog that took me days to convince myself to finish. The main character is, I'm sorry, a total bore, and the premise is ridiculous. Mimi's grief at the death of her best friend was moving for the first chapter or two, but beyond that, it was more of the same, chapter after chapter. If I were Daniel, her patient friend, I would have tossed her out on her rear! How exactly did Mimi discover her family history? Just from the bits and pieces her mother told her? But there was so much her mother didn't know, and there weren't any family letters or diaries to read. Characters disappear -- whatever happened to Mimi's mother's two brothers? -- and reappear -- Mimi's grandmother's cousin leaves home when she runs away from her abusive husband, unable to obtain a Jewish divorce from him, yet reappears a hundred pages later, the mother of a daughter, with no explanation. Where was she? Did she marry again? Ages and history don't gibe or make sense; did this book have an editor?

What we have here is a workmanlike first draft of a novel that should have been revised before it ever saw the light of day.

Rating:
Summary: This is good literature....
Review: Ms. Zackheim must be carrying a sense of past generations somewhere in her DNA. I'm not sure her scholarly research skills alone, or her talent as a writer, could explain the compelling portrayals in The Bone Weaver. I was moved to tears more than once as this author made me know the pain, loneliness, and fear of her characters. Transitions were executed smoothly as the reader is transported back and forth between contemporary California and late 19th Century Russia. I will recommend this book to all my friends who are readers of good literature.

Rating:
Summary: This is good literature....
Review: Ms. Zackheim must be carrying a sense of past generations somewhere in her DNA. I'm not sure her scholarly research skills alone, or her talent as a writer, could explain the compelling portrayals in The Bone Weaver. I was moved to tears more than once as this author made me know the pain, loneliness, and fear of her characters. Transitions were executed smoothly as the reader is transported back and forth between contemporary California and late 19th Century Russia. I will recommend this book to all my friends who are readers of good literature.

Rating:
Summary: The lessons of four generations.
Review: Professor Mimi Zilber is the last in a line of strong-willed, courageous Jewish women. Though her days are peopled by colleagues, students, a patient suitor, and her aging mother, the death of her lifelong best friend has cut her adrift from any true intimacy. Compelled by grief and isolation, Mimi begins reflecting on the lives of her great-grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother. As she contemplates the terrors and losses these women endured, she finally locates her kinship with them and learns that it resides in her own courage -- the courage to heal, the courage to love even her querulous and difficult mother, and the courage to allow herself be loved.
Though Mimi's story derives from the bitter abuses that Jews have suffered in the past century or more, its overarching theme of pain, healing, and history applies to any person and any people. This is one of the great strengths of Victoria Zackheim's moving and well-written novel. We can all gain strength and humility by considering our forebears, making them real to us, and measuring ourselves against their accomplishments and the debts we owe to them.

Rating:
Summary: The lessons of four generations.
Review: Professor Mimi Zilber is the last in a line of strong-willed, courageous Jewish women. Though her days are peopled by colleagues, students, a patient suitor, and her aging mother, the death of her lifelong best friend has cut her adrift from any true intimacy. Compelled by grief and isolation, Mimi begins reflecting on the lives of her great-grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother. As she contemplates the terrors and losses these women endured, she finally locates her kinship with them and learns that it resides in her own courage -- the courage to heal, the courage to love even her querulous and difficult mother, and the courage to allow herself be loved.
Though Mimi's story derives from the bitter abuses that Jews have suffered in the past century or more, its overarching theme of pain, healing, and history applies to any person and any people. This is one of the great strengths of Victoria Zackheim's moving and well-written novel. We can all gain strength and humility by considering our forebears, making them real to us, and measuring ourselves against their accomplishments and the debts we owe to them.

Rating:
Summary: What a strong book!
Review: The interwoven generational stories were very powerful and the grief in the book is palatable. I wanted to take Mimi, the main character by the hand and talk to her, and promise her that the pain would go away.

The author has achieved something very real and true with this book. It is a haunting story of grief, missed loved, and the nature of healing.

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