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Recommended Reading: 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union'
April 30, 2007

Yes, you read that correctly. I'm recommending that you read Michael Chabon's wacky, wonderfully imagined but sometimes clumsily plotted new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. There's been quite the brouhaha (alas, not a Yiddish word, but it really should be) over this book.

I come not to slander Kyle Smith, but to praise Michael Chabon. In my (albeit small) circle of bookish friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, conversation often turns to the death of imagination. Why does it often seem as if every new work of fiction is a roman a clef? (Should you want to imagine anyone discussing Smith's Love Monkey in that context, well, that's your imaginative right.) Even when a book is flawed -- and The Yiddish Policemen's Union is certainly that -- if its reach exceeds its grasp, I think it's heavenly.

Chabon has taken a tiny historical footnote (that President Franklin D. Roosevelt once considered granting the Alaskan panhandle to the European Jews fleeing the Nazis) and imagined a history, a culture, a society, even a cuisine for "Alyeska." It's 2008, and for over six decades Jewish refugees and their descendants have lived peacefully in the Federal District of Sitka. Now that District is due for "reversion," and the fate of all its inhabitants is up for grabs. Mixed in with that fate is the latest case for police detective Meyer Landsmann and his half-Tlingit partner Johnny Berko, who need to solve a murder that involves heroin, chess, Orthodox Judaism, and --of course! -- donuts (Chinese donuts cooked in Filipino greasy spoons).

It's a feast of a book. If a few of the courses are less tasty than others, you'll still want to stay for dessert.

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on April 30, 2007 | Comments (1)