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erika_sajdak 's review for:
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Michael Chabon
Combining the classic homicide detective novel with an alternate reality in which a Jewish district was created in Alaska in 1948 after the Israeli state didn’t work out is a stroke of genius. For many of us, Yiddish (even translated into English so thoroughly that the “American” language sounds awkward) is a foreign language, down to the “Strange times to be a Jew” that pervades the novel, and much of Jewish wistfulness. Sending me off-tilt with the setting was enough to make a murder mystery into a full description of a fanciful world, with motives so far reaching that they are intended to bring about the end of the world as we know it.
The characters took longer to install themselves in my brain and heart than the characters in some of his other novels, but the themes of alienation and isolation, even in a district already isolated to the point of being ridiculous.
The characters took longer to install themselves in my brain and heart than the characters in some of his other novels, but the themes of alienation and isolation, even in a district already isolated to the point of being ridiculous.