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A review by oneeasyreader
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
4.0
The Polish language lacks the words for such questions. It has little experience with them, and knows little of theology. This is why every heresy in Poland has been unleavened and bland. In fact, no real heresy could ever come about in Polish. By its nature, the Polish language is obedient to every orthodoxy.
Would you be surprised to read that some Poles aren’t the biggest fans of Tokarczuk?
The Books of Jacob is, even to professional reviewers, testing novel. Yet, it is a classic, perhaps mainly for the scope rather than the characters. However, I would like to mount a defence, of sorts, of their portrayals (since they barely speak for themselves in the book).
Making the best of a bad situation
Shorr thinks that it is bad to be a Jew, that Jews have it hard in life, but that being a peasant is harder. There really is no fate worse than theirs. In that respect, Jews and peasants are equals, in the sense that they share the lowest rung in the hierarchy of creation. Only vermin might be ranked beneath them. Even cows and horses, and especially dogs, get better care.
The Books of Jacob is a character driven novel where the characters drive very little. That is an overstatement, considering the titular character led a Jewish heretical sect who’s adherents wended their way throughout Europe and beyond, counting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as a descendant. But the simplification helps me understand the book. The characters (particularly women, who feature heavily) are put in situations where they have limited control, and the plot revolves around how they endure that. Not just emote, but also interact with what is a cruel world, with sexual assault, accusations of blood libel and false conversion, general anti-Semitism, plague, war, and imprisonment. The Books of Jacob acknowledges that your choices matter, but so do those of millions of others. Accordingly, when you’re a persecuted minority, don’t expect to things to play out your way. I see a parallel between the characters’ experiences with the fate of Poland as described in the book – patchily ruled by a distant Saxon king, then partitioned up by three greater powers.
Then the dogs are released on them, and there is a terrible tumult: the wolves attack the elk, the bears the boar, the dogs the bears, all in front of the king, who is shooting at them.
There is an element of frustration with the powerlessness of the characters. Jacob does not face a proper accounting for his sins other than in a brief conversation with Moliwda, who does call Jacob out on his s*** but never really pursues it. Another example of injustice is how gambler Bishop Soltyk brutally manipulates the law to get his collateral back without a second thought.
However, I am inclined to see the lack of justice as a form of maturity in storytelling rather than a flaw. It does make it harder to “enjoy” the book, which settles into a chronicle of events rather than a set plot moving to a resolution, but The Books of Jacob stands up better on reflection afterwards. It makes you think more about what life is about, and maybe even a guide if you’re planning to set up a religious splinter group.
The many layered tapestry
The Books of Jacob is also complicated in other ways. There is the classic unreliable narrator aspect, such as with the contrasting views of Jacob’s hippy-like commune at Ivanie, the honesty of his nephew Thomas or the mystery of whether Moliwda ever was a king of an Aegean island. However, Tokarczuk does not fully lean into the trope, using the omnipresent Yente to power through particular scenes with an accurate retelling of events.
Only Yente is unchanging, only Yente can repeat and can keep going back to the same place. She can be trusted.
It appears that Tokarczuk considers it more important that the reader knows that those events are “true” than imply any ambiguity if it was retold through the eyes of a “false prophet”. I am not personally hot on Tokarczuk trying to imbue Yente with some mystical elements when really she is just a device of an all seeing narrator, but it is a quibble. More important is that the book switches between viewpoints and their reliability according to the points Tokarczuk wants to make, an inconsistency that is unexpectedly interesting to me.
While I did not dawdle with The Books of Jacob, it is not an easy read. This is not a swipe at the writing or the translation, the flow is easy and uncomplicated – at least as to the words themselves. Rather, The Books of Jacob covers a broad spectrum of spiritual and geo-political matters and themes that I did not fully follow. I am sure there are more that I did not even notice. However, it is a credit to the book that it matters less than in, say, Gravity’s Rainbow, which confronts you with your inadequacies by rendering large parts of the plot incomprehensible if you are unable to unravel the deeper meanings.
The Books of Jacob is a “readable” classic, but your brain will itch afterwards with thoughts about what key points in it that you missed.
Would you be surprised to read that some Poles aren’t the biggest fans of Tokarczuk?
The Books of Jacob is, even to professional reviewers, testing novel. Yet, it is a classic, perhaps mainly for the scope rather than the characters. However, I would like to mount a defence, of sorts, of their portrayals (since they barely speak for themselves in the book).
Making the best of a bad situation
Shorr thinks that it is bad to be a Jew, that Jews have it hard in life, but that being a peasant is harder. There really is no fate worse than theirs. In that respect, Jews and peasants are equals, in the sense that they share the lowest rung in the hierarchy of creation. Only vermin might be ranked beneath them. Even cows and horses, and especially dogs, get better care.
The Books of Jacob is a character driven novel where the characters drive very little. That is an overstatement, considering the titular character led a Jewish heretical sect who’s adherents wended their way throughout Europe and beyond, counting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as a descendant. But the simplification helps me understand the book. The characters (particularly women, who feature heavily) are put in situations where they have limited control, and the plot revolves around how they endure that. Not just emote, but also interact with what is a cruel world, with sexual assault, accusations of blood libel and false conversion, general anti-Semitism, plague, war, and imprisonment. The Books of Jacob acknowledges that your choices matter, but so do those of millions of others. Accordingly, when you’re a persecuted minority, don’t expect to things to play out your way. I see a parallel between the characters’ experiences with the fate of Poland as described in the book – patchily ruled by a distant Saxon king, then partitioned up by three greater powers.
Then the dogs are released on them, and there is a terrible tumult: the wolves attack the elk, the bears the boar, the dogs the bears, all in front of the king, who is shooting at them.
There is an element of frustration with the powerlessness of the characters. Jacob does not face a proper accounting for his sins other than in a brief conversation with Moliwda, who does call Jacob out on his s*** but never really pursues it. Another example of injustice is how gambler Bishop Soltyk brutally manipulates the law to get his collateral back without a second thought.
However, I am inclined to see the lack of justice as a form of maturity in storytelling rather than a flaw. It does make it harder to “enjoy” the book, which settles into a chronicle of events rather than a set plot moving to a resolution, but The Books of Jacob stands up better on reflection afterwards. It makes you think more about what life is about, and maybe even a guide if you’re planning to set up a religious splinter group.
The many layered tapestry
The Books of Jacob is also complicated in other ways. There is the classic unreliable narrator aspect, such as with the contrasting views of Jacob’s hippy-like commune at Ivanie, the honesty of his nephew Thomas or the mystery of whether Moliwda ever was a king of an Aegean island. However, Tokarczuk does not fully lean into the trope, using the omnipresent Yente to power through particular scenes with an accurate retelling of events.
Only Yente is unchanging, only Yente can repeat and can keep going back to the same place. She can be trusted.
It appears that Tokarczuk considers it more important that the reader knows that those events are “true” than imply any ambiguity if it was retold through the eyes of a “false prophet”. I am not personally hot on Tokarczuk trying to imbue Yente with some mystical elements when really she is just a device of an all seeing narrator, but it is a quibble. More important is that the book switches between viewpoints and their reliability according to the points Tokarczuk wants to make, an inconsistency that is unexpectedly interesting to me.
While I did not dawdle with The Books of Jacob, it is not an easy read. This is not a swipe at the writing or the translation, the flow is easy and uncomplicated – at least as to the words themselves. Rather, The Books of Jacob covers a broad spectrum of spiritual and geo-political matters and themes that I did not fully follow. I am sure there are more that I did not even notice. However, it is a credit to the book that it matters less than in, say, Gravity’s Rainbow, which confronts you with your inadequacies by rendering large parts of the plot incomprehensible if you are unable to unravel the deeper meanings.
The Books of Jacob is a “readable” classic, but your brain will itch afterwards with thoughts about what key points in it that you missed.