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From School Library JournalGrade 7 Up–This breathtakingly slim volume is an exhausting but illuminating read that will provide much-needed clear or deep perception into life in innovative Israel. Kass ably communicates the internal as well as external lives, histories, and observations of a diverse cast of characters, including a naive, conflicted Palestinian youth who believes his heroic suicide will mean glory and financial stability for his family; a guilt-ridden German teenager who needs to know what sins his grandfather may have consecrated for the duration of World War II; a young Israeli kibbutznik escaping the demons she left behind in Russia; and an old, embittered Holocaust survivor who heals himself by making things grow. Readers follow these and other people hour by hour as three of them board a bus that is bombed en route to Kibbutz Broshim, near Jerusalem. The climactic explosion occurs mid-book; the remainder is consecrated to the aftermath, as survivors and their loved ones undertake to put back together their shattered lives. The reading experience is immediate, and the characters are deeply devised and painfully sympathetic as they find that they are inextricably and unexpectedly connected to one another.–Mary R. Hofmann, Rivera Middle School, Merced, CA
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From BooklistGr. 9-12. A suicide bomb attack on a crowded Jerusalem bus is the focus of Kass' tense, terrifying debut, told from the viewpoints of the passengers and their families, friends, and lovers. Among the narrators are a German boy wanting to find out if his grandfather was a Nazi; a young woman who has reclaimed her Jewish heritage, which her father denied; and an elderly Holocaust survivor. Their stories draw readers in. Then the bomb explodes, and the second half of the book focuses on the wounded and those who care for them in a Jerusalem hospital. The Israelis and the victims, if more or less idealized, are drawn with complexity. In contrast, the brief, first-person Palestinian perspectives are flat and distant, with little sense of the Palestinian experience: the Arab doctor is perfect, and the teenage suicide bomber and his advisor are ignorant, poor, filled with hate, and attempting to be martyrs. What's unforgettable is the grief and the chaos of the bombing and it is aftermath--the stories behind the news headlines. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review"[A] tense, terrifying debut." (Booklist )

"This timely novel explores the effects of a terrorist act from multiple points of view." (Publishers Weekly )

Most helpful client reviews

9 of 9 humans found the following review helpful.
Extremely realistic.
By NK
I was apprehensive regarding reading this book because I wasn't sure whether it would be from a balanced perspective or whether it would take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Having read it, I wouldn't classify it in either category; I'd just have to say that it's realistic. The book revolves around a homicide bombing of a bus in Israel. It is told through the perspectives of respective characters, including a German teenager who's come to Israel to find out regarding his grandfather who may have been a Nazi, an Israeli soldier, an Israeli immigrant, the 16 year old Palestinian boy recruited as a "Shaheed," the Israeli who imploys this boy illegally, a Palestinian doctor treating the bomb victims in an Israeli hospital, and others.

The author presents a startlingly realistic portrait of what living and being in Israel is like for all of these people. She communicates the emotions and tensions that come with living underneath such tense circumstances and brings readers into this challenging world, permitting them to see what it's like for themselves.

I highly commend this book and challenge audiences to try to step out of their secure worlds for a few hours and into the lives of the persons in this book. I think it will be an enlightening experience.

7 of 7 persons found the following review helpful.
Award winner from the Association of Jewish Libraries!
By Heidi Estrin
This book is the 2004 winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Older Readers category. The award is given each year for the best in Jewish children's literature.

Real Time follows a number of characters hour by hour to the moment when their lives intersect at a bus bombing in Israel, and through the aftermath of the event. We listen the voices of kibbutzniks, an earnest German youth, and even the Palestinian boy who has been persuaded to

carry the bomb. Some characters are followed through the entire book, while others make only brief appearances. The format takes some time to adjust to, but once you become immersed in the story, it is exceedingly readable.

The book is sophisticated in it is construction, in it is characterization, and in it is realism. Intricate timing allows us to see simultaneous events and to comprehend how they are likely to become connected. Every reputation is realistically portrayed as a mixture of good and bad, guilty conscience and hope, victim and oppressor, each dealing with their own unbearable situation. Each person speaks for him or herself, without interpretation by a narrator, efficaciously and economically revealing the applicable thoughts and emotions. While the events of the story are the stuff of today's headlines, the book's format shows how political situations are actually composed of many, numerous overlapping personal situations. The whole conception of the book is summed up by the reputation Baruch, when he says "I am percentage of the story, and Dan, and Lidia, and likewise the Palestinian boy, the suicide bomber. Like tangled string when you pull it, it gets tighter."

5 of 5 persons found the following review helpful.
Really Powerful
By Doctor Justine
Although the reader of Real Time begins this journeying cognizant of the approaching and catastrophic explosion that connects the lives of it is diverse characters, there is not one thing predictable in regards to this book. It is a powerful and gripping story, and hooks the reader from the start. Each reputation is depicted with complexity, from the guilt-ridden adolescent grandson of a German soldier, compelled to discover the truth when it comes to his grandfather's past, to the Holocaust survivor attempting to invent order and beauty on an Israeli kibbutz. These are but two of the lives that are fatefully woven together, and the reader is quickly drawn into their worlds, both external and political, and internal and private. Ms. Kass artfully renders palpable the wide range of many times contradictory--and hence real--emotions that haunt each of the characters, and succeeds in the exceedingly difficult task of translating the wordless horror of trauma into language. There are no happy endings in this book, at least not in the intimate sense; however, amid the interminable suffering, Ms. Kass' depiction of deep and enduring love offers relief, and serves to sustain us and give us hope.

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