2005 book 105

aharon appelfeld's the healer
i didn't really like this book much: partially this was due to a lousy translation, and partially to the fact that the entire plot can be summarized as follows: during the late 1930s in europe, a dude, his wife, and his two kids go to the middle of nowhere to see some holy man b/c his daughter has some unspecified mental malaise. the dude wants to go home. it's not a very interesting story, and despite what the back of the book says, his return to an intensely anti-semitic vienna is only covered in the last three or so pages, and thus has no emotional impact. i'm all, "what was the point of this?"