Quick book review

I'm posting this here because I feel obligated to do so. I don't have a contract or anything, but I'm a member of LibraryThing.com's Early Reviewers group. In exchange for putting my name in to receive advance copies of various books (for free!), I review them. Ry, Laurie, CH-$, Sara -- y'all really oughta look into this! I posted my first review on the LibraryThing site, but figured I'd chuck this out here 'cause I could.

"Mossad Exodus," by Gad Shimron.
Before picking up Gad Shimron's "Mossad Exodus," I had just finished reading Robert Baer's "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism" and T.J. Waters' "Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class," two books that were each excellent in completely different ways. Those enjoyable experiences contributed to the high hopes I had for this book, and I think that may have been the problem. It would have taken a REALLY strong book to live up to those expectations, and "Mossad Exodus" simply is not that good.

The story itself is very compelling: you have a humanitarian-relief effort on a grand scale, harrowing escapes from bad guys wearing proverbial black hats, a glimpse into the spy life, various explorations of the history of that corner of the Middle East and North Africa, etc. It should have been great!

Unfortunately, it took Shimron approximately half the book to really hit his stride. The first hundred pages or so are riddled with forced metaphors that don't really fit, bizarre turns of phrase that set my "translation-o-meter" buzzing (no translation credit is given, although the inner flap acknowledges that it was originally written in Hebrew--one wonders whether Shimron translated it himself, which is a task usually best left up to the pros), and excessively-short chapters that end just as they are engaging your attention.

By their powers combined, these factors made reading "Mossad Exodus" a month-long process. Admittedly, I am in graduate school and had other things to read as well; that said, those other factors didn't prevent me from cranking out all 384 pages of Craig Murray's "Dirty Diplomacy" in two days flat. (THAT is a truly excellent book, although 'True Believers' of the right-wing variety are likely to dismiss it out of hand...viz. Stephen Colbert's priceless tongue-in-cheek comment, "Reality has a well-documented liberal bias.")

The second half of the book is far less forced, and as Shimron allows the story to flow and stand on its own merits, it really becomes very enjoyable. Other reviewers have provided decent synopses of the overall story, so I shan't belabor the point here: I simply wish he had gotten himself out of the way. Sometimes less is more, as they say, and fewer attempts at cleverness and verbal gymnastics would have served Shimron well.

On balance, this is a book that anyone with an interest in Israeli and/or Jewish history should read if they have a fair bit of time, and/or come across it at a friend's house or the like. I would not go out and buy it--the tidbits of really fascinating history that Shimron occasionally draws in to illustrate the context aren't THAT numerous--but it is worth reading at least once. Once my brother gives it back to me, I think it is very likely that I will make it my first foray into the world of Book Crossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/): I am glad to have read it, but can't see any circumstance in which I would care to re-read it.