A Delightful Compendium of Consolation: A Fabulous Tale of Romance,… (original 2007; edition 2008)

I had a LOT of trouble with this book and yet there were some charming aspects to it. The characters, for example, had interesting personalities. I love the art of letter-writing and stories that unfold in this format can be tantalizing because you feel voyeuristic in reading them. This book, however, was often railroaded by the letters. They were dense and meandering.

I became disinterested many times, yet pushed on because i typically love books set in medieval times. It has taken me a long time, with many books read concurrently. I don't recommend it unless readers have specific background in Jewish History and Studies. ( )

Set in motion when Karimah, the daughter of a Jewish merchant, runs off with a Muslim boy in the 11th century AD. Her father has declared her dead and the family sat shiva for her. But Karimah writes letters to her younger brother, creating wondrous tales for him of her travels. Meanwhile, her father finds consolation in exchanging letters with his friend, Rabbi Nissim, although he doesn't tell the Rabbi that Karimah isn't in truth dead. The compilation of all these letters mixed amongst each other make up the bulk of this compendium.

While some of the adventures are entertaining, many of the letters also bog the story down. The history of the Jewish diaspora was interesting but without a thorough grounding in the history, the general reader would find it hard to seperate Visotsky's imaginings from recorded facts of everyday life. I wanted very much to like this but it was a struggle to work my way through it and ultimately I was disappointed. ( )

I found it difficult to follow the plot in this book, it was drawn out and somewhat confusing. ( )

Though the story is interesting, I found it confusing to figure out how much of the book was based on reality and how much was fiction (not made very clear by the author at all) and was quite frustrated that the whole thing was in the form of letters back and forth between people. This made it very laborious to get through and at some point I gave up. If a book is too much hard work to read, I lose interest. I hope I'll be able to finish it at some point because it was interesting learning about a time and place in Jewish history that we don't get to read about often. In addition, I found the cover busy and unattractive like one of the previous reviewers. That, and not understanding what was real and what was fiction in this book, nearly put me off from reading the book in the first place. ( )

I selected “A Delightful Compendium of Consolation” from Early Reviewers because the subject matter appealed to me. I like books that are letters, I like literary travel and I like to learn about Judaism. However none of this came together for me in this book. I just could not get into it and I tried more than once. The cover put me off, it is much to busy and it might have prevented me from buying the book, but I had this book in hand. Covers are meant to draw the reader in and this one didn't and neither did the flowery text. Reading the other reviews I realize I missed something interesting, but I couldn't find the hook. ( )