"Nothing short of amazing."--Entertainment Weekly A million-dollar painting by Marc Chagall is stolen from a museum. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a thirty-year-old quiz-show writer. As Benjamin and his twin sister try to evade the police, they find themselves recalling their dead parents--the father who lost a leg in Vietnam, the mother who created children's books--and their stories about trust, loss, and betrayal. What is true, what is fake, what does it mean? Eighty years before the theft, these questions haunted Chagall and the enigmatic Yiddish fabulist Der Nister ("The Hidden One"), teachers at a school for Jewish orphans. Both the painting and the questions will travel through time to shape the Ziskinds' futures. With astonishing grace and simplicity, Dara Horn interweaves a real art heist, history, biography, theology, and Yiddish literature. Richly satisfying, utterly unique, her novel opens the door to "the world to come"--not life after death, but the world we create through our actions right now. Reading group guide included.
Following in the footsteps of her breakout debut In the Image, Dara Horn's second novel, The World to Come, is an intoxicating combination of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion. Using a real-life art heist as her starting point, Horn traces the life and times of several characters, including Russian-born artist Marc Chagall, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam an eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on earth.
At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben's twin sister Sara forces him to attend a singles cocktail party at a Jewish museum, Ben spots Over Vitebsk, a Chagall sketch that once hung in the twins' childhood home. Convinced the painting was wrongfully taken from his family, Ben steals the work of art and enlists his twin to create a forgery to replace the stolen Chagall. What follows is a series of interwoven stories that trace the life and times of the famous painting, and the fate of those who come into contact with it.
From a Jewish orphanage in 1920s Soviet Russia to a junior high school in Newark, New Jersey, with a stop in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, Horn takes readers on an amazing journey through the sacred and the profane elements of the human condition. It is this expertly rendered juxtaposition of the spiritual with the secular that makes The World to Come so profound, and so compelling to readers. As we learn near the end of the beautiful tale, "The real world to come is down below--the world, in the future, as you create it."--Gisele Toueg
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Annoyed and disappointd:
I had read positive reviews of World to Come, and planned to read it. The premise -- guy steals a Chagall he is convinced belongs to his family -- was intriguing and piqued my interest. Along the way, I came across "In the Image" (Horn's previous novel) and decided to read that first, being a linear kind of guy. Wasn't crazy about the book, but decided to give Horn a second chance and bought World.
I have to admit I was enthusiastically recommending the novel to friends and family by the time I was... more info
Ambitious but does not entirely work:
This is a very ambitious novel in which Horn attempts to use mystical images and thought to connect two separate times and plot lines. Remarkably, she deliberately does not push the plot to its conclusion, but instead devotes her final chapter to elaboration of the mystical thought. Unfortunately, I thought Horn got too literal and specific in the final chapter and it did not work. The highlight of the novel for me was the love affair between Ben and Erica, two very likable and well developed... more info
Great... but why didn't I love it?:
The greatest mystery for me about "The World To Come" is why I didn't love it. There is much to admire about it. Start with the cover art by Rob Ryan, who manages to evoke both Marc Chagall and Maurice Sendak. I could hang a print of that on my wall. And then there is the miraculous writing, that weaves together a love story, historical re-imaginings, and religious musings. The story is original, profound, and very well written. In fact I'm a little in awe that this was written by someone under the age of... more info
Top Notch Storytelling:
This novel excells in every respect. It is wonderful storytelling. The book uses beautiful language and imagery, has excellent character development, and is easy to read. Dara Horn weaves stories within stories in a maze like fashion that delights the soul. Spread over generations, different countries, and different languages, she posits that The World To come is really what one does on earth in life. She delves into Jewish notions of the afterlife which will relate well to any Abrahamic faith. Her opinion... more info
