Reviews - The Yiddish Policemen's Union

1.74k reviews for:

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon

3.66 AVERAGE

emilyshenk's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

saraparets's review against another edition

2.0

This one was hard to get into. Probably the yiddish slang, but it was a difficult read.

realkateschmate's review against another edition

2.0

This book was an impressively-realized disappointment.

The entire way through, I couldn't stop thinking that Chabon had lent his extraordinary talent to the wrong cause. Although his noir is quite good, it's simply not his native language, and it shows. Chabon is so much more expressive than this mode of writing allows.

Furthermore, and this was a new experience for me with regards to Chabon, I couldn't muster any feeling for the characters, who were so clearly imaginary, no matter how vividly described. Cruelly, Chabon's natural brilliance turns against him in passages of dialogue, wherein characters who confuse "your" with "you're" churn out witty comments about adverbs, or comebacks that, while totally necessary for the hard-boiled detective genre, ring false.

Finally, it didn't help that the first 150 or 175 pages were absolutely crammed to the rafters with similes. Chabon is a master of the simile, but he went overboard here.

I want very much to give The Yiddish Policemen's Union 3 stars, because I truly love this man's writing ability and his imagination, but if anyone asked me how the book was, no doubt about it, I'd say, "it was ok."

keitto's review against another edition

3.0

Three and a half stars. A super-Jewish whodunnit with compelling and fully-fleshed characters.

explodinghead's review against another edition

4.0

Really enjoyed this potboiler for what it is. From my POV, this book has a pretty mixed reception (despite the 3.7 you see on goodreads) in part because it is too "overwritten" for readers looking for a gumshoe detective story, and it's also not nearly as personal or emotional (on the face of it) as Chabon's earlier books. But this was perfect for me because I'm always slightly uninterested in detective stories, looking for something more meaty than a whodunnit, but I'm also rolling my eyes at pretentious MFA doorstoppers. And Yiddish Policeman's Union kinda threads that needle between the two for me. It's "too genre" to be serious, but too serious to be genre (as my strawman critic would say). But I found this to be an interesting whodunnit, elevated by some really terrific sentences. Less interior than Wonder Boys, but I also found this plot to be more believable than Wonder Boys lol. Speaking of believability -- I had a fun time in Sitka! I'm not Jewish, so probably a good deal of the Yiddish puns went over my head, but the specifics were a blast.

Kinda loses its way in the end, but the prose is fun enough that who cares