The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) by Michael Chabon
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.25 You Save: $9.70 (61%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: Alternate fun
Summary: 5 Stars
Remember in the old Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever? Kirk saves Edith Keeler and some how Earth's timeline is altered. It's not until Spock discovers that Edith was a sort of lynch pin in time, that she had to die so Earth could go on its normal way. In The Yiddish Policeman's Union, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the always entertaining Michael Chabon, takes a real historical idea - a-pie-in-the-sky proposal in 1940 to open up the Alaska Territory to European Jews.
While Congress killed the real plan and in the book, a character named Anthony Dimond is the divergence point, Chabon takes on the classic What if scenario and spins a wonderful tale of alternate Jewish history. Added on is a glorious, hilarious Raymond Chandler style detective story.
We are introduced to Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man named Emmanuel Lasker in the Zamenhof, a fleabag hotel where Landsman also happens to live. Landsman notes how professional the murder looks; the man was shot in the back of the head execution-style, the gunshot silenced by a pillow. Landsman notices syringes, packets of heroin, an open cardboard chess board in mid-game, and a beat-up copy of Siegbert Tarrasch's book, Three Hundred Chess Games.
From there the novel unfolds like a flower, as Meyer navigates his way through red herrings and his failed marriage with fellow officer Bina, who is no his superior. Chabon takes us down this brilliant alternate history filled with appealing -and not so appealing -characters right out of the golden age of film noir.
A triumph.
Book Review: Yiddish Policemen's Union
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Chabon has written a masterpiece of a mystery with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Imagine Fargo in Alaska, with an imaginary Jewish community. In his book, Chabon has rewritten history - making the area around Sitka, Alaska a temporary homeland for the Jewish nation after (in the book) the nation of Israel has failed. In two months, this temporary oasis will revert to its former status as part of the US and all inhabitants will need to apply for permanent residency or be kicked out, facing a new diaspora.
In the midst of these unsettling events, Landsman the homicide detective faces unsettling of his own. He is burned out, living in a flop house where a dead body has just shown up. His ex-wife has just become his boss. And he's sporting serious, constant questions about what to do with his life, now that he doesn't really have a life.
To tell the plot would be to spoil the plot, so let's satisfy ourselves with the word that the pacing is slow at first but draws the reader into an imaginary world. By the end of the 1st act of the book, you are engrossed and cannot stop.
I would be remiss to not mention that there has been criticism of the book for its depiction of Jews in Alaska as criminals and as argumentative. This is fair, but one must remember this is a story where the lead is a homicide detective and the entire culture is unsettled by possibly being returned to exile.
And that's the masterpiece of the book. What would people do to discover permanence? What would Landsman do? And in this mystery wrapped within a mystery novel, Chabon presents a beautiful puzzle.
Book Review: A mayse of the Frozen Chosen
Summary: 5 Stars
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a delightfully fun read set in part of Alaska set aside as a refuge for the Jews after the Holocaust. The United States, after the Israelis lost their war for independence, leases the territory to the Jews for sixty years. But now the lease is up and most of the Jews will have to find another home. This sets of a series of events that starts with the death of a chess prodigy and continues through convolutions that would take the Eruv Maven to sort out.
Instead of Hebrew and redemption, the they speak the Yiddish of exile. Many of the metaphors that seem odd in English work well when understood that it is meant to be understood as a literal translation of the Yiddish (translated back to Yiddish it works). Buildings and streets have names culled from the cannon of Yiddish literature. The reader familiar with Yiddish language and literature will have to stop every few pages to laugh with recognition, at least until the tragedy embedded in the plot becomes apparent.
The reader unfamiliar with Yiddish will definitely miss most of the inside jokes, like a Shoyfer (Shofar-ritual horn -- Cell phone), Sholem for a gun (Shalom-Peace-Piece),and Shomer (watchman for a corpse before burial). Leo Rosten's The Joys Of Yiddish could be a helpful companion book.
Book Review: Really, really good
Summary: 5 Stars
I almost gave up on this book. I'm not Jewish and I found the generous serving of Yiddish words to be very discouraging and a barrier to appreciating the book fully. At page 150 I was ready to put it down, but because the book received so much praise (I think the Economist called it one of the best books of 2007), I forced myself to continue and am so glad I did. I finally got into the groove of the novel and found myself awestruck by the way the author's words could capture such true-to-life feelings and conversations. The author's writing style and the way he can write a conversation between characters makes other authors' representations of characters and words seem contrived. WARNING - Plot spoiler: He even got me to accept the eventual reuniting of Detective Landsman and his ex-wife as a perfectly natural thing (even though at the beginning of the book, the only thing I hoped for was that the author would not pander to the audience's natural desire for happy endings). All I can say to those who are turned off by the book is to keep at it, you'll be rewarded. You may even speak Yiddish by the end of it.Book Review: Tangled up in Jews
Summary: 5 Stars
At this point nearly 400 reviews have been written, and this novel has won the Nebula and Hugo awards. What can a mild-mannered reader add to this dogpile of praise?
Perhaps nothing, but I will say this. Chabon writes books that remind you why you liked novels to begin with. He's a master word craftsman and he tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end, which no matter how many Wallaces and Pynchons and other postmodern vanguards I read, remains the best way to tell a story. It's as simple as that. The fact that while telling a hard-boiled mystery Chabon can reimagine the last 70 years of history in a brilliant and convincing way just shows why he is honored as he is. In this book he fashions a world and a story that could take place on any planet using any mythology, but Chabon chooses Earth and the mythology of Jewish mysticism. The novel is all the richer for it, not to mention the wonderful use of a beautiful onomatopeic language, Yiddish.
This novel is not for everyone, just as pork is not for everyone, but for those of us who willing to partake, this novel is the bacon.