Real Time Review

I finished Real Time by Pnina Moed Kass. This book was a little harder to read than some others I’ve been reading lately, which is a nice change of pace. The story jumps in between times and people to tell the story of how their lives converge around one traumatic event.

Because there are so many characters, summarizing each of their stories would take too long. The point at which their stories converge is when a new volunteer to a Jewish farm is picked up at the airport by another, older volunteer and their bus is bombed. We slowly learn how each of them, along with other people from the farm came to be there.

I liked the overall story of this book. I think it gave a unique view of how life works inside Israel. The different viewpoints make you think about different ways one could view an experience like this, and some of them take you just a bit out of your comfort zone.

While I liked the different viewpoints, I didn’t really like their presentation. The story was broken up with large headings which contained the persons name, the place, and the time. It was confusing to have to keep up with different time zones and so many different people.

I would recommend this book to pre-teens and up. The writing is at a higher level, and the main subject (a bus bombing) is pretty graphic. However, this is a real-world issue, one that should be dealt with.

I would compare this book to books like Little Piece of Ground for subject matter. They do have opposite viewpoints but it is about the Palestinian-Israeli issue.