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Michael Chabon wins my vote as an author who brings the reader right into an environment that is foreign to them and makes true the physical sensations of weather, cleanliness,garlic, fear and more. Can you dream of a Jewish community in Alaska without the Chabon mind as the guide? Themattically a separate nation state being reclaimed; liives to be manipulated and discarded and even reclaimed; desolation and a fight for the unachievable is each a theme that is teased out of world history and then twisted to fit this alien setting as if it really did exist. It rings true enough, that I developed a map of the region in my mind. Then, when I read of a tunnel was dug under a street, I had a WOW moment. I could imagine it. The story of redemption interwoven with the story of diaspora overweighs the story of political manipulation in my reading of it, but the characters could have walked right out of pages. That makes it a great read from a great writer.Read full review
I’m not a fan of all of Michael Chabon’s books: I found The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay an absolute wonder, but The Mysteries of Pittsburgh overrated and boring. I approached The Yiddish Policemen’s Union with some anticipation (after all, writers are supposed to get better at their craft with time, aren’t they?) and, while not as delightful as Kavalier & Clay, it was quite an enjoyable read. A noir set in a dystopia, after all, is a very good starting point. What makes it remarkable is, above all, Chabon’s verbal inventiveness in a mock-Chandler tone of voice. Even if overdone at times (really, would anyone else have the guts to christen a secondary character, a four-foot-seven tribal inspector on a motorcycle, with the name of Willie Dick?), this voice draws the reader in and lights up on almost every page an otherwise very moody story about detective Meyer Landsman, a loser in a pseudo-country that is about to disappear. "According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead." Almost two hundred pages later, Landsman’s boss and ex-wife suspends him for a month after an unauthorized operation has gone very wrong. Here’s what she tells him: “And of course you’ll get the chance to tell your story. In the meantime, I’m going to keep your shield and your gun in this nice pink plastic Hello Kitty zipper bag that Willy Zilberblat was carrying them around in, okay? And you just try to get yourself all nice and better, right?” (The Hello Kitty thing is totally out of the blue: I don’t care if it’s product placement, it is utter writerly genius). Finally, a portrait of Landsman’s sister Naomi, whose death in the cockpit of her aircraft a few months before the action takes place turns out not to have been accidental, but to be tied to a vast American conspiracy to blow up the Middle East: "Naomi was a tough kid, so much tougher than Landsman ever needed to be […] She was boyish as a girl and mannish as a woman. When some drunken fool asked if she was a lesbian, she would say, “In everything but sexual preference. ” […] She was not complicated, Landsman’s little sister, and in that respect, she was unique among the women of his acquaintance." This last example shows how Chabon infuses the genre - notwithstanding the pitfalls of stereotype - with genuine feeling. And that’s what makes The Yiddish Policemen’s Union worth reading.Read full review
This book was a very entertaining read. It was fascinating and informative on a couple of levels. First, it immerses the reader into Jewish and Alaskan life, as well as within the police department that keeps watch over this very conflicted community. Second, by reading this book one can learn a little about the Yiddish language and a great deal about the Jewish culture. The only drawback, if you can call it that, is that the reader will feel as if they are living in the cold harshnes of Alaska, which is a credit to the writer. The author had been recommended to me a few years ago and I am glad I finally got around to reading one of his books. I look forward to reading other books by Michael Chabon.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was a challenging read for me. I loved the essence of the story – a murder in the early pages carries the reader through a complex group of characters where the villain is not revealed until the final moments. The unknown world of chess and Jewish terminology and history made the book a bit more difficult for me to follow through some sections. Unfamiliar names and language idioms slowed me down through the heavier sections. The story of Landsman and Bina provides a secondary storyline throughout the book that shows the complex world in which any police investigator works – the balance between the professional obsession to solve a case and the need to have a relationship removed from that life. While this was a more challenging read for me than many books I select, I learned a great deal from this fictious Jewish possibility and found the murder story riveting to move me to complete the book.Read full review
Michael Chabon's novel, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," is complicated and literary, the kind of a book one would expect from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. It is page-turning and poignant; a moving piece of English prose. Reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union is like "watching a gifted athlete invent a sport using elements of every other sport there is -- balls, bats, poles, wickets, javelins and saxophones." Although the book is classic noir, there are elements of an international terrorist thriller, complicated by religious conspiracy and a band of end-of-the-world hopefuls. The story begins with the introduction of a hung-over detective, Meyer Landsman, to a gun-shot corpse in a fleabag hotel. He becomes interested in the corpse, though he has enough dead bodies of his own: a never-born child, a possibly murdered sister and a father who committed suicide. The corpse turns out to be a chess prodigy and heroin addict, the wayward son of a powerful head of a Jewish sect called the Verbovers, and possibly the key to the essential mysteries of both his own death and the future of the Jews. There are plenty of twists, and Landsman finds himself knocked unconscious at the end of more than one chapter, dopey at the start of the next, which is what it means to be the hero of a noir novel. Chabon's imagination is extraordinary, born of brilliant ambition you don't even notice because it is so deeply entertaining. He invents every corner of this strange world -- the slang of the "Sitkaniks," their history, discount houses, dive bars, pie shops. Despite the complicated plot, the details of the world are enthralling. The book falters a bit at the end. The solution to the mystery feels a bit contrived and what happens to Meyer Landsman seems like something the book requires. Chabon's conjures up imaginary worlds and makes the reader nostalgic for them. Conventional visions of the future- world's fairs, Esperanto, a belief that the Jews of the world will stop wandering and find a peaceful home somewhere on the planet- are buried and mourned as beautiful, but insufficient. In this strange and breathtaking novel, the wise, unhappy man settles for closer comforts. As Landsman says, toward the end of the book, "My homeland is in my hat." Pick up a copy and enjoy the ride through the landscape of Chabon's homeland!Read full review
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