The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) by Michael Chabon
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Book Reviews of The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: Jewish District in Alaska
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Chabon's novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is potentially one of the best alternate history tales I have read. This was done with an amazing writing style and unique character developments. T
he protagonist, Detective Landsman, is just the kind of tragic romantic that is so recklessly enjoyable.
The world this character lives in is on an island in Alaska, the Federal District of Sitka. This place has acted as a refugee sanctuary for the descendents of Holocaust survivors. Since the State of Israel was whipped off the map in a war with Arabs in 1948, Sitka has become a Yiddish-speaking metropolis in America's last frontier. But not all is well, since the one thing that most Jews didn't plan for is about to occur. Reversion. Soon, the District of Sitka will be reabsorbed into the Union as American Territory. The day was coming and they always knew, but for people like Landsman, it just seems a bit too much like old news for the Jews.
Regardless, Detective Landsman has a homicide to resolve with his trustworthy, half Tlingit, half Jewish partner, Detective Berko. The homicide occurred at Landsman's own hotel, of which he is a resident, and after so rudely being interrupted from yet another night of drinking, Landsman decides he must take on the case. But he must solve it before reversion occurs, otherwise the case will be thrown out. The new commanding officer of the homicide department is an American educated woman named Bina, who also just happens to be Landsman's ex-wife.
If things weren't awkward enough, they would become detrimental later. The victim of the murder turns out to be a Mendel Shpilman, son to a Hassidic crime boss, the Verbover reb, Mendel has also been hoped to be the Tzaddik Ha-Dor by most Hassidic Verbovers. A potential messiah who may be the coming prophecy of a reestablished Jewish state. Future investigations lead Landsman to his own dead sister's involvement with Mendel. Turns out that many of the Verbover's have been training to destroy the Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock, and once again carve out a state of Israel in the Middle East. They were planning on using their ordained messiah to lead the cause. They also do this with a sympathetic US government, supportive of Zionism.
Landsman just wants to find the murderer. It's discovered that Mendel did nothing more but beg for a mercy killing for all the hardship he was releasing onto the world. With Mendel, the Verbover's were going to use the ordained messiah to lead Jews into the new state of Israel built on the blood of the Muslims. But what cross-dressing chess player wants that responsibility? No, all Mendel really wanted was to make a living off playing chess and to find himself a nice Jewish man to settle down with. The Verbover's didn't take to kindly to such a plan or lifestyle.
Overall the novel is written in a classic detective noir style. But the setting changes the mood of many things. Mixing Yiddish words and Alaskan landscapes becomes quite a treat for the imagery and the dialogue bestowed to the reader. I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in crime, detective, noir tales, suspense, anything like that. But this novel also becomes a love story between the reunited Landsman and Bina who care little for a reestablished state of Israel. Their nation is the Yiddish Policemen's Union.
Book Review: Deliciously Multi-Layered
Summary: 5 Stars
Prior to U.S. involvement in World War II President Roosevelt proposed establishing a temporary Jewish settlement on the Alaskan panhandle. In The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon takes that premise and creates an alternate reality in which the impending "Reversion" (the frozen Chosen are about to be displaced from their temporary homeland) is but a few weeks away. Initially this is mere backdrop for the story of Meyer Landsman, a Sitka police detective suffering a bad case of bottle abuse the result of a never-born child and subsequent divorce, the possibility that his sister was murdered, and a father who committed suicide.
Landsman awakes in his fleabag hotel room one morning to learn that one of the other tenants has been murdered. Landsman learns the corpse is a chess prodigy and heroin addict, but also the wayward son of a powerful head of a Jewish sect and, possibly, the key to the future of the "Alyeskan" Jews. Against the orders of his boss, who also happens to be his ex-wife, Landsman's investigation, with help from his half-Tlingit, half-Jewish partner and half-cousin, takes him into the underworld of Orthodox black-hat gangs and crime-lord rabbis.
Chabon pays homage to Hammett and Chandler but manages to bring something new to the genre, and although some readers may find the narrative pushes the limits of their endurance - characters have skin "as pale as a page of commentary" and rough voices "like an onion rolling in a bucket;" "In the street the wind shakes rain from the flaps of its overcoat;" he writes of his protagonist, "Something wistful tugs at his memory, a whiff of some brand of aftershave that nobody wears anymore, the jangling chorus of a song that was moderately popular one August twenty-five summers ago." - others will be entranced.
If the plot of Policemen's Union is a trifle complex and its denouement - composed of elements of international terrorists complicated by a religious conspiracy and a group of end-of-the-world zealots - a little over the top, Chabon's treatment of this alternate history, its discount houses, seedy bars and pie shops, is razor sharp. The settings, the characters, the narrative all drive the plot. In Landsman Chabon has created a Jewish Phillip Marlowe (replete with porkpie hat); but where Marlowe is rather one-dimensional, Landsman is the everyman antihero, as prone to fits of self-pity and the urge to return to his room, and his bottle of slivovitz and his World's Fair souvenir glass, as he is committed to solving the mystery of this murder and tying it to the untimely death of his sister, all the while ruing his divorce while lacking the courage to make amends. The reader is compelled to follow Landsman across the pages to see what happens next, who he will meet next, whether it's the pie man's daughter or the diminutive Tlingit police inspector named Willie Dick (honest!).
Chabon also deftly explores the relationship between fathers and sons as well as what it means to be displaced - a people without a homeland, or as Landsman himself says, "My homeland is in my hat."
Highly recommended.
J. Conrad Guest for The Smoking Poet
Book Review: Wow!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This has to be one of the strangest novels I've read in many a year. I've read, and enjoyed, many works of alternative history. I'm also a fan of detective novels, especially the hard-boiled variety pioneered by Chandler and Hammett. I'm also something of an afficianado of Jewish culture and writing, though I'm not Jewish myself. I've been a fan of Herman Wouk's, for years, and I was especially a fan of the late Anton Myrer, and also of Chaim Potok. I'd never read anything by Michael Chabon before, never heard of him prior to the furor created when he won the Pulitzer for Kavalier and Clay. I'm not, in any real sense, a fan of modern, non-genre fiction. I like mysteries, some historical novels, and a few science fiction and fantasy books, though my tastes there tend to be very picky. All of that being said, I decided to try this book based on the appeal and the subject matter, and I wasn't disappointed.
Meyer Landsman is a homicide detective in Sitka, Alaska. The world however is different from the one we know of here. In our real world, in 1940, there was a proposal to open Alaska up to the refugees from Europe, especially the Jews. The non-voting congressman from Alaska lobbied hard and successfully to thwart the proposal. Author Chabon creates an alternative universe where the aforementioned congressman steps in front of a car crossing the street in Washington, and the proposal becomes the law. The Federal Government creates the "Federal Department of Sitka" and settles all of the Jewish refugees on several islands in Southern Alaska. The city of Sitka has a population of 4 million, and a vibrant culture that's slowly dying because, after sixty years, the U.S. Government has decided to close down the Federal Department and allow the land to revert to the control of the Tlingit tribe of Alaskan Indians, who own the surrounding land. They have been involved in clashes with the Jews repeatedly over the years, and have made it clear that since they didn't want to accommodate refugees in the first place, when they get the chance they'll tell the Jews to leave unilaterally.
Landsman is a prototypical detective. He drinks too much, he's not too smart, he's bad at following orders, he smells a bit. He's also a bit unconventional, at times: his ex-wife is his boss, and his cousin (a Tlingit Indian adopted into the Jewish faith) is also his partner. Landsman is living in a residence hotel, waiting for the end of the Federal Department, when someone kills a heroin addicted chess player who lives in another room in the building. Landsman feels some sort of kinship, and also a measure of insult that the killer dared to do this right under his nose, so to speak. As a result, when the ex-wife/boss tells him to back off on the case and let it go, he balks and decides to investigate anyway.
This is one of the strangest, most interesting books I've ever read. The author is obviously a fan of the hard-boiled detective novels of the previous century. He combines their style with a unique Yiddish argot that's sometimes hard to follow, but never impenetrable (at least to me) and frankly at times amusing. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it highly to almost anyone.
Book Review: Chabon is back! Oy vey!
Summary: 5 Stars
It's taken a long time for Michael Chabon to write a real follow-up to his award-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. During this seven year or so period, Chabon wasn't exactly idle: among other writing, he did produce an interesting novella (The Final Solution) and a forgettable young adults novel, Summerland. None of this, however, really like another Kavalier & Clay type of book. The Yiddish Policemen's Union is that long-awaited novel.
Although it doesn't really fit into one single genre, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a mix of classic hardboiled mystery and science fiction (although technically, I suppose it fits better into that ambiguous genre of speculative fiction). Chabon has constructed an alternate reality where the state of Israel was never established; instead, Jews were given an area in Alaska to act as a temporary homeland and refuge from the horrors of WWII Europe. The emphasis here should be on "temporary"; sixty years after its establishment, the Federal District of Sitka is about to revert to the control of Alaska. Some Jews will be allowed to stay, but many will be kicked out.
With Reversion just a couple months away, homicide detective Meyer Landsman gets involved in a murder that most people don't want solved. Landsman is a typical hardboiled detective in the mold of Philip Marlowe or Lew Archer: he drinks a lot, has little in the way of money or friends and is constant defiance of authority. To make matters worse, his boss is also his ex-wife, Bina, who wants the Reversion to go smoothly (hopefully leading to both permanent residency and a job).
The murder victim is a heroin addict staying at the residence hotel that Landsman is living in. Since Bina doesn't want open cases, she has this one put in the cold case file, but Landsman feels obligated to solve a killing that took place more-or-less in his home. The victim, however, is not a mere junkie; instead he turns out to have been a potential Messiah, a role the victim did not exactly enjoy. There are, though, many who did want this Messiah, including the victim's father, a powerful rabbi.
To solve the crime will require all the standard things a hard-boiled detective needs to go through: gunfights, blows to the head, threatened job loss, powerful enemies, and so on. What's actually going on turns out to be more complicated than a simple killing. What makes this stand out from a routine mystery is, of course, the exotic setting, which is where Chabon really shines: he has created an alternate world which is well-constructed and essential to the story.
While really good, this is not a perfect novel; it's biggest flaw is that starts somewhat slow, but when it does pick up, it moves right along. Overall, this book is worth the wait: it's not Kavalier & Clay, but it's close enough.
Book Review: Magical realism, American-style
Summary: 5 Stars
Have just finished my second time through the book and remain dazzled. In this outing more than any of the others that came before, Chabon modernizes and Americanizes the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to create a work that seamlessly blends fantasy and reality to create an alternate universe that is at once exotic, meticulous, poignant, and brutal.
What starts off as a fairly familiar-seeming plot (morally and emotionally bankrupt detective with nothing left to believe in but the truth, no matter how devastating, investigates a crime, uncovering layers of duplicity, brutality, and betrayal) soon assume entirely unfamiliar contours when you realize that the setting is an alternate universe (in which the Jews, post-WWII, have been settled not in Israel, but in Alaska); the crooks are a sect of ultra-conservative Jews; the locals are Tlingit Indians; and the murdered man may be the world's long-awaited Messiah. Now add chess, espionage, ancient Jewish law, snow-streaked streets, bush pilots, heroin, love, yiddish slang, wolves, red cows, and miracles ... top with Chabon's brilliant prose ... mix thoroughly, and watch something brilliant happen.
Ultimately, this book isn't about a crime: it's about a succession of rootless people yearning for a place to belong. It's the timeless search of the Jews for a homeland, of Meyer Landsdown for a reason to believe, of a boy messiah to be accepted for who he is rather than who everyone wants him to be, that elevates the book to something much, much more ambitious than simply an exercise in yiddish noir. As anyone who has read Kavalieri and Clay knows, Chabon is as deft at creating fully-realized, sympathetic characters as he is at crafting dazzling metaphors. You don't have to believe Chabon's alternate history to understand that beneath the literary fireworks, this is a story about diaspora and the fundamental yearning of all living things to find their way back to the place where they belong.