Helpful Score: 2
This long, sweeping novel covers the years approaching World War II for many people in the spread out Balaban family. Starting in Kozoniece, Poland, the family had scattered to France, USA, Shanghai China, all over the world. Each chapter tells the story from a different character's point of view. There are so many chapters and so many characters, that I kept forgetting who was whom, and how they were related. I am only 1/4 way through the book at this point. I had extremely high hopes at the beginning, but I feel that the author was too ambitious and gives too many divergent story lines that cover too many subjects.
