How good is the new David Grossman book?

David Grossman, the well-known Israeli writer, has a new book coming out this September, namely To the End of the Land (pre-order at that link).  The basic plotline is of a mother who sets out on a wander through the Galilee, with a former lover, to avoid any news of her son's possible death on the front in Lebanon.

Has any book received better blurbs?  Nicole Krauss blurbs that Grossman "may be the most gifted writer I've ever read"; Paul Auster compares the book to Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina. 

Here is a discussion of whether the blurbs for the book are overwrought.  Yet it has received amazing reviews in Israel.  It has won a German book prize.  It was strongly recommended to me in two German bookstores, by sales clerks.  Grossman himself seems to realize how good the book is.

Here is an interview with Grossman.

I am on p.100 of about 700 pp., and while the book develops slowly, I am not ready to reject the extreme claims made on its behalf.  I am sad when it comes time to put it down.  Have any of you read it?  Heard credible accounts of its quality?