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The Bookseller's Sonnet (2000)

by Andi Rosenthal(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 5

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English

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review 1: This was another one I read for book club.There are three main stories: the story of Margaret More Roper, daughter for Thomas More, set during the reign of Henry VIII; a Holocaust survivor whose family Margaret's manuscript has been passed through the generations; Jill Levin, a contemporary curator at the Jewish Heritage Museum in lower Manhattan.As I was reading the book, I found I was enjoying the older stories much more than the contemporary one. Ms. Levin is dating a man who is too-good-to-be-true, yet her family does not approve of him only because he is not Jewish. I was losing patience with this part of the story and wishing there had been less of this and more details about Margaret More.Then, in the last or next-to-last chapter, came a twist than I never saw com... moreing that brought it all together and changed my opinion of the book from OK to very good. I was particularly happy about this since lately it seems that I'm enjoying a book until the ending, which either has been feeling added on because the author had reached the publisher's desired word-count, or like the author had run out of ideas and had to end the book someway. I read the Kindle version of the book using the Kindle app on my iPad. There were some formatting issues were jarring -- no clear separation between the text from the Tudor manuscript and the contemporary story was the one that repeatedly made me pause and regroup. The other was that Henry VIII's first wife was identified in the book as Katherine of Aragon; I have always seen her name spelled as Catherine.However, in spite of this, I thought it was a very good book and well worth reading.
review 2: Author Andi Rosenthal deftly weaves together past and present in this wonderful debut novel, The Bookseller's Sonnets. Because of its religious plot, people will want to compare it to the Davinci Code; while is does have cinematic potential, as that novel did, it is more multi-layered, modern, and taps in to character, prejudice and identity much more than the Davinci Code; it is more than just a religious mystery. Lead character Jill Levin, a curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in present-day Manhattan, receives an anonymous donation. It is a 500-year-old handwritten manuscript that—if it is truly authentic—is the diary of Margaret, the daughter of St. Thomas More. What is written inside has the potential to rock the worlds of both Judaism and Catholicism, but may affect Jill's life even more. Rosenthal's writing is crisp and fluid, and I couldn't wait to get home from work every night and crawl back into this world she created. As others here have said, it is a true page turner. less

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