The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Plot, grimy, tedious, Landsman

Meyer Landsman is a detective going through a messy divorce and stuck living in a fleabag motel. He just want to drink himself to death and forget about the stresses of his job and his life. Unfortunately for him there's a murder in his hotel and his ex-wife is now his boss. That's the set up to the murder mystery part of The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. The mystery takes place in a very different (an alternate) Sitka Alaska. It is in the last few months of a sixty year lease as a temporary refuge for Jews fleeing Europe in WWII. The alternate history part of the novel has earned The Yiddish Policemen's Union a number of science fiction awards but it certainly doesn't read like science fiction; alternate histories rarely do. Michael Chabon's novel is smack in middle for me of two other altnerate histories I've read: Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (which I loved) and Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (which I didn't finish). Chabon's alternate version of things is interesting and easy to follow. The murder mystery isn't especially clever but would have made a nice cosy 250 page novel. Together though, the alternate history and mystery compete too much for attention. Chabon focuses so much on pointing out just how well he has thought things through that he doesn't give Meyer Landsman time to investigate or the other characters to live their lives. Finally there is the culture aspect of the novel. Although different sects are mentioned the characterization is rather flat. In trying to prove the legitimacy of this alternate Sitka Chabon's characters end up trying to out-Jew each other. I get that in this version of things Yiddish is a thriving language and in closed communities people tend to let everything hang out a little more but there is no true sense of sixty years having passed. These descendants of the original refugees are stereotypes of old world Jews. There's very little influence of Alaska or native Alaskan culture on any of these people. There's no sense of the local geography, geology or weather. Sitka is not Austria, Poland, Germany, Russia or any of the places these refugees would have been coming from. The land and the other people nearby must have had an influence on their culture and traditions after sixty years. This fictional Jewish metropolis might as well have been set on the moon; there is almost nothing Alaskan in the book save for the delightful cover art on the edition I read.

The central whodunit and its political penumbra is less craftsmanlike, overall, than the extraordinary fictional landscape Chabon creates, which lasts and hovers in the imagination like the Fata Morgana he describes.

This would have been a lot easier to read if there was a good yiddish & hebrew online dictionary.

I was having a little trouble getting into this one till I started the audiobook. Peter Riegert was the narrator. The narration made the book for me. So much excellent writing, in a slightly strange/slightly foreign alternate history. I liked it.

Well written, though the descriptions are a bit too much at times. I do like how Chabon combines the complex modern novel with alternate history and mystery styles. It doesn't come off as a hodge-podge, but as a well-thought-out plot.

The first time I read this my reaction was...meh. It seemed dense to me with the main character a depressed, divorced possibly suicidal homicide detective annoyed me. A second reading however, revealing a fascinating look at Jewish culture and history albeit through the lens of speculative fiction. This was an oddish choice for me given the situation in Gaza at the moment. I'll be honest, the mystery itself was secondary to the mythologies and varying relationships between the characters. I like alternative history novels, they leave you thinking "what if.." sometimes in disturbing ways. Recommended. But patience needed.

It took me awhile to finish this book - not because I didn't like it - but because Michael Chabon's stories are so complex and fascinating. I've gotten myself used to much lighter fare and this isn't the kind of book I could sit down and read in an afternoon. I love how Chabon has reimagined the world and history for this story and I just love to reread his sentences. I don't want to get into the crazy concept, but it's filled with great characters and a good mystery to keep you going!

a bit hard to get into at first, and it was at times hard for me to follow along, but all in all a good and interesting read.

I've been reading a string of books lately that start out as exceptional and then fizzle before they end. Maybe I’m the one fizzling. There are just some down right funny and brilliant lines in this book: “I hate to wake you, Detective,” Tenenboym says. “Only I noticed that you don’t really sleep.” “I sleep,” Landsman says. He picks up the shot glass that he is currently dating, a souvenir of the World’s Fair of 1977. “It’s just I do it in my underpants and shirt.”…”Sitting up in a chair”. He drains the glass. “Wearing a sholem.” And while you are reading, don’t forget to look in the back of your copy of the book to refer to the glossary. You’ll find that a sholem means gun; ironic bilingual pun on American slang “piece”. I admit, I could have used a more complete glossary. There were words that seemed Yiddish to me, that weren’t back there. The story is set in the District of Sitka – (from the book cover) a “temporary” safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the collapse of Israel. Detective Landsman begins his quest to solve a murder of a heroin addict who is killed in the derelict apartment building he has been living in since the collapse of his marriage. The path he takes to solve this murder involves a string of Yiddish, including some that is created just for this fictional Jewish settlement, and a multitude of characters who wear black hats, play chess, may or may not be the Messiah, and have names like Hertz Shemets or Batsheva Shpilman who proved a little difficult for me to keep track of. I had to flip back several times to remind myself who certain people were and what their relationship to the plot was. And the plot. It was a bit convoluted. His beautiful phrasing was sometimes buried and forgotten. But still. I would read say read the book.

I'm giving this book a five because it is so brilliantly written and its a good read. He takes what realities have happened, and creates a world where the opposite did. Great book!

Kind of a neat twist on gumshoe fiction. I didn't love it, but I liked it.

meh - ends much like CT. yankee in king arthur's court... if i bought this, i would have wanted my money back.

Beautiful writing. I enjoyed the characters and the stories. It's a solid 4.5 for me. I will highly recommend because I love alternate histories that are clever rather than just "different" or "shocking" along with the melding of jewish culture and lore. It's not for everyone, but awesome for those it fits. Side note, negative reviews all call it overwritten. These are the people that think "the wind caused the trees to bend and buckle" is a worse sentence than "the wind blew through the trees" and those people suck.

Saying this is my least favorite Chabon novel sounds too ungenerous. It is a good book and has the Chabon trademarks of quality, but it didn't affect me the way his other books have. It's a little disappointing as I felt the pairing of two of my interests - Raymond Chandler and Yiddish - treated by one of my favorite authors, would result in my most favorite book ever. That being said, the book still made me laugh a lot and had many intriguing ideas.