Reviews

I would have given it more stars had it not fallen apart a bit at the end. While the initially separate plot lines all wove together nicely and made for interesting reading, the ending left too much to speculation about what happened to the boy when he went missing.

sierras12's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious

4.75

I loved this book but I have a bone to pick with the people who wrote the little summary blurb. the first sentence is a spoiler for like 2/3 of the way into the book? and the second doesn’t happen til almost the end. I wish I hadn’t read the summary before I read the book. that being said tho I thought it was remarkably interesting and odd. an enjoyable read

anne_abundantcolors's review against another edition

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4.0

Definitely a moving and thought-provoking book with an ambiguous ending. Like others, I sometimes got impatient with the switching to different storylines and decades. I admit I skimmed through some of those chapters. The chapters about Jaz and Lisa were my favorites with Laila's story a close second. The desert really is a character in this book. I'm still left with a lot of questions. Where did Raj go and what happened to him? Will the marriage of Jaz and Lisa improve?

dave37's review against another edition

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3.0

I wanted to like this more than I ultimately did, but I just couldn't warm up to any of the characters. The interweaving of stories across time was engaging, but the people who populated them, not so much. I'll definitely read another by this author because I think this was a very good book - just one that didn't completely click for me.

mark_lm's review against another edition

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4.0

Engrossing novel, probably really 5 stars but I will have to think about it. The book is written across time with different characters (reminiscent of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and others, I think there is a name for this kind of fiction, but I can't think of it) all of whom have in common a single location in the desert (hence the book title, a fragment from Balzac's quote "In the desert, you see, there is everything and nothing....It is God without men.") The characters are all looking for something, the mystery of the world, something bigger than our lives, etc. The combination of the book being written as parts of a puzzle, when the characters are trying to assemble a puzzle, the characters being a large variety of searchers or pilgrims including several damaged war veterans, the use of American Indian mythology, and the maintenance of a persistent system of imagery throughout make this high quality heady stuff.

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