MixedBookslut‘What is a Jew without Jerusalem? How can you be a Jew without a nation? How can you make a sacrifice to God if you don’t know where to find him?’ These are the questions that drive Nicole Krauss’s third novel, Great House … The novel at times feels slow. All action has already occurred and the tension comes not from the moment to moment situation of the characters, but from the meta-narrative that ties the characters together. Though it reaches moments of elegant reflection, the novel lacks urgency … While the novel poses high stakes questions about Judaism, the characters themselves thirst for something even greater than love, the need to be needed, the desire to belong. It’s this unrelenting combination of intellectualism and emotion that kept me hooked.
