...engrossing, highly readable, darkly sexy ... [a] transporting novel ... Solomon is a truth teller. Her observations of domestic life — rote marital sex, the steady drip of compromise, the sine wave of intimacy and irritation — are unfailingly sharp ... The Book of V. is a meditation on female power and powerlessness, the stories told about women and the ones we tell about and to ourselves.
...irresistible, sexy and intelligent ...When I was growing up, the Purim pageant play felt lacking in nuance... In her imaginative and fiercely feminist retelling, Solomon offers much greater complexity ... Solomon’s novel spans generations, stretching millennia to weave three vibrant and transporting tales from the fabric of a biblical past ... Like Michael Cunningham’s The Hours whose triptych structure Solomon credits, the novel skillfully mines the domestic sphere (of parties, sewing circles, hidden gatherings of kept virgins) for its kinetic inner life ... Solomon’s previous novels...lay the foundation for this multifaceted masterwork, which extends the scope of her sensibility over a larger landscape. Her gorgeous, lilting prose vibrates with fight, destabilizing patriarchal norms with questions of power and want, identity and self-determination to timeless and timely results ... Like Mrs. Dalloway to The Hours, the biblical echoes throughout offer a sort of treasure hunt gratification, but the novel succeeds on its own. As with the best of desert island (or pandemic) reads, The Book of V radiates a dynamism that invites rereads and generously keeps giving — challenging and arousing us as it delights.
Each [protagonist] takes up roughly equal space in Anna Solomon’s deftly interwoven round-robin of a novel, their stories both compulsively readable and thrumming with deeper cultural themes ... it’s [Lily's] frank, self-deprecating voice that often anchors Book of V. as it toggles back and forth through time ... Much like Michael Cunningham did in The Hours, though, Solomon...has the gift of making you sad to leave each protagonist as her respective chapters end, before plunging happily into the next. Like Cunningham, too, she manages a great novelistic trick: blending real history and radical fiction into one enthralling whole.
Although the characters and their stories differ markedly from one another, Solomon’s omniscient narration serves as a lovely, wry guide ... >em>The Book of V. offers plenty of thoughtful interiority while spinning a fast-moving story. Lily’s meditations on feminism, motherhood, friendship and middle-class striving will resonate with many readers. The novel’s unexpected retelling of the Esther story is imaginative yet, in its own way, faithful to the original ... As with The Hours, The Book of V. connects its three characters’ stories not only thematically but also narratively, with a surprising yet inevitable and satisfying conclusion.
...a well written, evocative novel following three women grappling with their newfound identities ... While their tales are thematically linked throughout, it is not until late in the book that further connections appear—but each story line is captivating regardless ... A winner for fans of historical fiction, literary women’s fiction, and Jewish interest stories, this would also make for an interesting book discussion.
Solomon...models this clever, heartfelt triptych on The Hours, weaving a retelling of the biblical story of Esther with the linked stories of a senator’s wife and a Brooklyn mom ... Solomon connects these stories in a way that’s fresh and tantalizing, with fascinating intergenerational discussions about desire, duty, family, and feminism, as well as a surprising, completely believable twist. This frank, revisionist romp through a Bible tale is a winner.
Esther, the Old Testament teenager who reluctantly married a Persian king and saved her people, is connected across the ages to two more contemporary women in a sinuous, thoughtful braid of women’s unceasing struggles for liberty and identity ... [a] questing, unpredictable new novel ... while layers of overlap continue among the three women's stories—second wives, sewing, humming—so do subtly different individual choices. Finely written and often vividly imagined, this is a cerebral, interior novel devoted to the notion of womanhood as a composite construction made up of myriad stories and influences ... A bold, fertile work lit by powerful images, often consumed by debate, almost old-school in its feminist commitment.
