Customer Rating:  
Summary: Lets go aain
Comment: It is part science fiction and part mystery. Or Yiddish Policeman is fully both. Thus just by that it is hard to classify. Whether you have a Yiddish background, or great exposure to a Jewish heritage, or an Alaskan one, the world creation by Chabon elevates this story to a level beyond the common in either genre.
Yiddish Policeman's is a very good book. It is a well deserved edition of exceptional literature. An achievement and worth reading. Is the mystery a little weak and perhaps a bit like a television mystery episode, in parts. Is our protagonist too intimately caught up in the details of the mystery, again perhaps. But as the story stretches out, these become small quibbles that do not detract that this is a phenomenal piece of writing.
The narrative and detail in creating the world soon has you engrossed in that world so you can believe in it. Would the jews wish to resettle to much safer Alaska, then to the very turbulent holy land? Probably not, but with speculative fiction, once you give into it, then the new worlds builds upon itself. Would oil be cheaper if there were no wars in the mid-east, or would there still be wars there over other issues.
Since we are concerned about the Jewish settlement in Alaska, we don't really even care about such. We become consumed about the world Chabon has crafted. Even thinking that perhaps more in this world would be nice to visit again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hard to get through...
Comment: This was another book club suggestion. I had a hard time getting into the author's writing style. The first 100 pages or so were very difficult for me to read because (a)I kept having to flip back to the yiddush glossary, and (b)the author was overly descriptive for some things. I was also disappointed with the last quarter of the book. The underlining plot was a murder mystery, which I enjoyed the build up to the solve. However, when it was finally resolved, the book ended immediately. It felt ...more This was another book club suggestion. I had a hard time getting into the author's writing style. The first 100 pages or so were very difficult for me to read because (a)I kept having to flip back to the yiddush glossary, and (b)the author was overly descriptive for some things. I was also disappointed with the last quarter of the book. The underlining plot was a murder mystery, which I enjoyed the build up to the solve. However, when it was finally resolved, the book ended immediately. It felt extremely rushed
Customer Rating:
Summary: Alternate fun
Comment: Remember in the old Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever? Kirk saves Edith Keeler and some how Earth's timeline is altered. It's not until Spock discovers that Edith was a sort of lynch pin in time, that she had to die so Earth could go on its normal way. In The Yiddish Policeman's Union, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the always entertaining Michael Chabon, takes a real historical idea - a-pie-in-the-sky proposal in 1940 to open up the Alaska Territory to European Jews.
While Congress killed the real plan and in the book, a character named Anthony Dimond is the divergence point, Chabon takes on the classic What if scenario and spins a wonderful tale of alternate Jewish history. Added on is a glorious, hilarious Raymond Chandler style detective story.
We are introduced to Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man named Emmanuel Lasker in the Zamenhof, a fleabag hotel where Landsman also happens to live. Landsman notes how professional the murder looks; the man was shot in the back of the head execution-style, the gunshot silenced by a pillow. Landsman notices syringes, packets of heroin, an open cardboard chess board in mid-game, and a beat-up copy of Siegbert Tarrasch's book, Three Hundred Chess Games.
From there the novel unfolds like a flower, as Meyer navigates his way through red herrings and his failed marriage with fellow officer Bina, who is no his superior. Chabon takes us down this brilliant alternate history filled with appealing -and not so appealing -characters right out of the golden age of film noir.
A triumph.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Please....ignore the bad reviews...
Comment: With mouth agape, I just read those negative reviews. I can't believe it, no, wait, I can. The book isn't easy, it isn't full of trashy scenes of greed, sex, easily understood 4th grade vocabulary or vampires. That must be it. The minute you tell me you read it for your book club, that's the minute I know why you trashed this book. Book clubs. Can't choose your own reading or need group validation so you know what's good? Can't discern that otherwise?
O.K...now for less vitriolic verbiage. This is a great novel. I used the glossary, and I used a dictionary of Yiddish terms. I am not Jewish, Alaskan or a huge fan of alternate history, but I am a huge fan of Michael Chabon! If he writes it I will come. His mind is not the usual mind, his pen is not the usual pen, and his wildly intricate thought processes fascinate.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Comment: A terrific read, super fiction and mystery that could have happened. Jews in Alaska...why not.
A Coen brothers Movie,for sure.
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