I enjoyed this book. It reminded me, in some ways, of another mystery set in modern times in the Middle East searching for a similar book.

One chapter (The Book of Amato) seemed out of place. Most of the story flowed forward and this one was the narrator suddenly as an adult talking to another about his maestro. While it helped to have more information about the maestro, it led me to expect more flashbacks.

A good book for Ms. Newmark's first novel.

One of my discussion groups here in Spokane read this book and it was one of the rare books that we all enjoyed reading. Most of us like books that are more in depth than this one is but enjoyed the story line and how Jacob would "come out" at the end. (The deeper books don't appeal to our one or two older ladies who want a "good" read, i.e., something gentler and no sex-drugs-rocknroll.) However we all agreed that this was an enjoyable book.

I generally do not enjoy reading nonfiction - in fact I will read 2-3 chapters and then put it down. However, this book was very intriguing. It didn't read as nonfiction; I had to remind myself that this was truly someone's life.

If Ms. Wells were put down in any type of living situation, I think that she could find a way to survive, whether she was destitute or quite comfortable. She has a lot of "street smarts".

This book left me shaken, also. I now view locked doors as questionable (you need to read the book to figure out that comment!).

That there are people in existence who are so cold and single-minded as the no-named hired killer is frightening.

This was a very powerful story. I think that McCarthy gets a bit edgier with every story that he writes.

A face-to-face group I belong to read this, the group is all women. I think I was the only one who really, really liked it.

This book didn't necessarily "grab" my attention when I started it. The first half of the book goes into too much detail of the lawyer's extensive sex life which really doesn't have that much direct bearing on the story line.

At any rate, about half way through the story, my interest did pick up (as did the action). I found that I wanted to discover whether my notions about one or two items would be confirmed.

This is a very dense book. The current time story-line cannot be skipped, while I did skim over the olde Englishe because it was slower reading.