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: Literary Whodunnit
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me say that I love Chabon. He is one of the most brilliant writers of our time. His prose is beautifully constructed, his characters interesting, his use of simile inventive. And while I enjoyed this piece of fiction very much I felt the trouble with combining a literary work with a whodunnit caper was that the words, all those beautiful words and beautiful sentences and descriptive prose, sometimes got in the way of what was going on. Instead of driving the story they bogged it down. Still, the writing is so good as to be one of a kind. Read his work just to learn what a great writer writes.Book Review: a modern masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union is the only contemporary crime novel which can compete with Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels. In the establishment of the Sitka District, a Jewish protectorate set in a series of islands along the coast of Alaska when, supposedly, the newly emergent nation of Israel fell apart in 1948, is a feat comparable to founding the sciences in order to create science fiction. And it may bring back Yiddish. I could not bear to be done with the book upon first reading, so I immediately turned around and read it again, with perhaps even greater pleasure.Book Review: A delicious meshuga melange of Yiddish and Alaskan.
Summary: 5 Stars
You won't be unintentionally jarred by the interpolation of Yiddish and Alaska. For all the strangeness of its alternative-history setting, the plot is as finely crafted as if it had been put together with woodworking tools. I mean this plot is as good as one by Thackeray. It's a love story, a good one. I did figure out the main aim of the conspiratorial combination long before it was revealed. There is not a dull character in the whole thing. This book was a superlative choice for a poolside book on my Alaskan cruise vacation.Book Review: Listen to this
Summary: 5 Stars
The audio version of this wonderful novel is so well-read by Peter Riegert that you must consider listening to this one, rather than reading it. As others have indicated in their reviews or as you might have heard on NPR this is a splendid vision of a world that never existed in reality but is populated with so many vividly drawn characters that your recollection of 20th century history is likely to be permanently altered. Rieger's one man performance of the whole spectrum of characters is incredible.Book Review: Chabon's best to date
Summary: 5 Stars
Chabon creates an absorbing counterfactual world with a hard-boiled detective story inside it. Informative and hilarious, big chunks of the book are as good as any fiction I've read. Chabon is a terrific writer. The ending does not do the rest of the book justice, but I flew through this book and really enjoyed it. It's along the lines of "Gun with Occasional Music" by the brilliant Jonathan Lethem and "Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World by Haruki Murikami. Highly recommended.