Name: The Puttermesser Papers
ISBN: 9780099289456

Cynthia Ozick

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York and yearns for a daughter. So she creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem. Labouring in the dusty crevices of the civil services, she dreams of reforming the city - and manages to get herself elected mayor.

The Puttermesser Papers

Daryl Houston

What a strange book! I've never read anything quite like it, and it's worth reading for the novelty alone. It's very self-consciously a book about creating character, which I found pretty interesting but which might be irritating if you're not into that sort of thing. While each of the sections has a sort of plot, this isn't a novel in the conventional sense, which again is pretty fun if you're ok with that sort of thing but might be a let-down for readers into more traditional novels. I liked it a lot and will read more by Ozick.

Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental; her love life is minimal. And her most idle fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true. She yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem - a Jewish mythological homunculus. She also manages to get herself elected mayor. Then Puttermesser inadvisably contemplates the afterlife, whereupon she is immediately hurtled into it headlong and discovers, at the end of it all, that a paradise found is also paradise lost.

Juan Sacco

Mandy

Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, a finalist for the National Book Award traces the adventurous fantasy life of a bookish spinster and New York civil servant. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.