Book review: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen's Union. (HarperCollins, 2007)
It is a commonplace by now that Tolkien created the Elvish language(s) first and Middle-Earth after, as a world for the languages to be spoken in. Similarly, Chabon says he created the Sitka District, and the whole alternate history behind it, to have a world (or at least a part of the world) where Yiddish was the official language and culture. And The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a story set at a crucial turning point in this world, as The Lord of the Rings was in Tolkien's. Here endeth this analogy.
Setting: a district in and around the city of Sitka, Alaska, peopled by Jewish refugees from Central and Eastern Europe in the 1940s, but now (2007) on the eve of dissolution and reversion. Genre: classic detective noir; well, and alternate history too, I suppose. Protagonist: Meyer Landsman, classic noir detective: hard-boiled, drinking problem, failed marriage, can't stop investigating the case despite orders from High Up to drop it. Plot: execution-style shooting of a lonely heroin addict turns out to involve organized crime, secret bases, cult/government conspiracies, etc. Themes: personal redemption, fathers and sons, Jews and Messiah. Voice: written in a distinctive style that evokes Yiddish (present tense, some turns of phrase like "Landsman pulls on a glove and...tilts from side to side the dead man's head") without reverting to clichés-but then, I should know from how real Yiddish sounds?
Four woofs. Good enough I went right back and started reading again from the beginning (which is rare for me), not quite so great I want to go out and start forcing it on people who haven't already read it themselves-who can't be many.
It is a commonplace by now that Tolkien created the Elvish language(s) first and Middle-Earth after, as a world for the languages to be spoken in. Similarly, Chabon says he created the Sitka District, and the whole alternate history behind it, to have a world (or at least a part of the world) where Yiddish was the official language and culture. And The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a story set at a crucial turning point in this world, as The Lord of the Rings was in Tolkien's. Here endeth this analogy.
Setting: a district in and around the city of Sitka, Alaska, peopled by Jewish refugees from Central and Eastern Europe in the 1940s, but now (2007) on the eve of dissolution and reversion. Genre: classic detective noir; well, and alternate history too, I suppose. Protagonist: Meyer Landsman, classic noir detective: hard-boiled, drinking problem, failed marriage, can't stop investigating the case despite orders from High Up to drop it. Plot: execution-style shooting of a lonely heroin addict turns out to involve organized crime, secret bases, cult/government conspiracies, etc. Themes: personal redemption, fathers and sons, Jews and Messiah. Voice: written in a distinctive style that evokes Yiddish (present tense, some turns of phrase like "Landsman pulls on a glove and...tilts from side to side the dead man's head") without reverting to clichés-but then, I should know from how real Yiddish sounds?
Four woofs. Good enough I went right back and started reading again from the beginning (which is rare for me), not quite so great I want to go out and start forcing it on people who haven't already read it themselves-who can't be many.