As Hanna turns into a modest and reluctant action hero, the book as a whole begins to resemble a cross between James Michener's The Source and an Indiana Jones adventure. And I mean both of those in the best possible way.
Hanna's globe-trotting pursuit of the Haggadah's secrets works well as a framing device, but it is in the historical sections that Brooks' storytelling ripens from merely good to transcendent. Each section evokes a colorful, thoroughly believable, emotionally convincing world peopled by complex human beings bathed in vices, diseases, and emotions - all in the space of a short story.
Brooks' writing transports us into these worlds almost as completely as her invented 15th century scribe, David Ben Shoushan, is transported by the marvelous pictures he is incorporating into the Haggadah.
It was in the still of the early hours, when the stars blazed in the black sky, that it happened. His fasting, the chill, the brilliant flare of the lamp: suddenly the letters lifted and swirled into a glorious wheel. His hand flew across the parchment. Every letter was afire. Each character raised itself and danced spinning in the void. And then the letters merged into one great fire, out of which emerged just four, blazing with the glory of the Almighty's holy name. The power and the sweetness of it were too much for Ben Shoushan, and he fainted.Hanna's own revelations, the personal and the professional, aren't as mystical as that. But she's good company, as Brooks spirits us through the ages on this most excellent adventure.
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