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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
3.5 ⭐️ rounded up because I Loved the writing. The actual plotting is a 3, fairly standard noir fare, but the characters are fun and man it has style!
Good old fashioned hard boiled detective story. Just with extra Jewish flavour (is that sour cream? not sure if want) and a splash of alternative history. All the right ingredients. Really liked it. No urge to visit Alaska.
A re-read for me for the Coffee & Crime Mystery Book Club that I run at the Livingston Public Library. I always re-read the whole novel right before we meet, marking key passages and generally trying to be aware of the mechanics of the novel--how the writer gave me the impression I received the first time, how the mystery itself gets worked and its relation to the expectations and cliches of the mystery genre. I loved it every bit as much this time but differently. Though I wished I had given myself more time because reading through Chabon's dense, rich prose style on a deadline is a little like chugging a gallon of the best dark hot chocolate, steaming hot. Part of the time I listened to Peter Riegert's wonderful reading of the book on disk, which was a real treat--he reads with such an understated panache. Also really enjoyed the interview with Chabon on Disk 10 at the end of the book about how he came to imagine a colony of Yiddish-speaking Jews in Alaska and the amazing, infinite pains he took to build his imaginary world with its alternate history.
This book is so good. I didn't want to put it down. It's filled with detective tropes, but kept fresh by the detailed, believable alt history setting and characters of the Alaskan Jewish metropolis of Sitka. What starts as an alcoholic detective trying to solve a murder grows massively in scope.
I discovered when I got to the end that there's a glossary...which would have been really helpful, because the book has a ton of Yiddish, a lot of which is Sitka slang unique to the book.
I discovered when I got to the end that there's a glossary...which would have been really helpful, because the book has a ton of Yiddish, a lot of which is Sitka slang unique to the book.
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Didn't read very much during my three weeks' vacation, mostly because I prefer to read while walking and I had no place to walk to. So it took a while, but I finally finished Michael Chabon's latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. My break did show how memorable his prose is, as three weeks later, the characters, situations, even tiny moments, were right there in my mind for me to pick up. Chabon's interest in genre fiction has made him write a police novel AND a "what if" alternate history in which the Jews were never given Israel, but a patch of Alaskan land instead, but as usual, it goes well beyond its genre conventions, giving us an incisive, poignant yet funny portrait of Jewish attitudes and culture. Chabon remains at the top of my authors list.
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
I loved the worldbuilding in this, but beyond that it was a very tropey noir mystery. This may have been deliberate, and it's a shtick that can probably carry a short story or novella, but not a full-length novel. That, plus the very insightful and poetic descriptions that sometimes seems incongruous the the viewpoint character, made the author's presence overpowering in places. For me, this was a good novel that might have been a great novel if the author wasn't trying so hard to be a great writer.
I really enjoyed this book. The premise was inventive and the characters were well developed. It would have been helpful to have a Yiddish dictionary for those of us whose Yiddish is need of improvement.
I had a love hate relationship with this book, but I think it was just not the right time to read it. It was my book for pleasure next to a bunch of books I had to read for uni. It wasn't really light enough to function that way though. Still, I have to say, I definitely like Chabon's writing in the novel, it has gotten me very interested into reading more of his work. The story was a little to heavy and complicated for light reading and it took me a long time to read next to all he other stuff I've been reading. The story didn't manage to pull me in enough and I had to fight my way through at times. But at other times I really enjoyed both the story and the way it was written. I think probably just not the right book at the right time, but all in all it was actually a good book.