The World That We Knew follows several young people in
France in the early 1940s as they navigate WWII. As a WWII novel, it’s typical in that it is
depressing, shocking, and heartwarming. As an Alice Hoffman novel, it’s typical
in that it includes a few elements of fantasy. The main magical element is the
existence of a golem, a mystical Jewish creature, which is created at the
behest of a woman who desires protection for her Jewish daughter as she flees from the
dangers at home.
I’ve read many WWII novels and, as is the case here, I usually
only do this for book club. Honestly, there
isn’t much more I care to learn about the war and there are only a few WWII novels
that have stood out as spectacular to me.
This is not one of them. It has its merits but it did not cover anything
I haven’t read before in other novels. In fact, I’ve even read about golems
before. Granted, I haven’t read about a golem in WWII before, but this novel
would have been more enjoyable if I didn’t have many other better WWII and
golem novels for comparison.
I was pleased that this novel did not move into a textbook
mode at any point which is a common pitfall of Hoffman’s novels. This one did hold my interest the entire
time. I enjoyed the characters and their
stories very much.
The audiobook was narrated by Judith Light. For most of the novel she did a great job with
a nice repertoire of voices and good acting. But, for about 1/3 of the novel
she spoke in an even rhythm while voicing the narrator. She spaced the syl-la-bles e-ven-ly in-stead
of speak-ing in a nor-mal rhy-thm. It
was quite annoying. Therefore, I give
her a B for this novel.
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