There are lots of other books in the booklog queue, but this one is due back at the library today, so it gets bumped to the front of the list. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s probably the most widely discussed of the books waiting to be logged…
In case you’ve been hiding out in a cave that no book reviews can penetrate, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is Michael Chabon’s new novel about a Jewish homeland in Alaska. In this alternate history, the founding of Israel went catastrophically wrong, and the Zionists were driven into the sea by Arab armies. Lacking a home in the Holy Land, a temporary Jewish homeland was created in Sitka, Alaska, with a sixty-year lease. As the book opens, the end of that lease is rapidly approaching, and the fate of the citizens of Sitka after Reversion is very much up in the air. As a common refrain through the book goes, these are strange times to be a Jew.
The book follows Meyer Landsman, a homicide detective with a drinking problem, as he gets involved in investigating the murder of another occupant of the fleabag hotel where he’s been bedding down since his divorce. Landsman is personally offended at having a murder committed under his nose, and so he defies direct orders from his superiors (including his ex-wife, now his boss) and continues investigating, even as the case leads him into a mess of corruption and some supernatural weirdness that may herald the arrival of the Messiah.
In some ways, this is a book whose main purpose seems to be to demonstrate just how effortlessly cool Michael Chabon is. He’s not satisfied to do one really clever thing at a time– not only has he written an alternate history in which the Jewish homeland is in Alaska, not Israel, but he’s also managed to write a terrific Jewish hard-boiled PI novel, and just for kicks, he throws in a few miracles here and there. This is all wrapped up in fabulously rich and playful language:
Nowadays one never knows. Out at Povorotny, a cat mated with a rabbit and produced adorable freaks whose photos graced the front pages of the Sitka Tog. Last February five hundred witnesses all up and down the District swore that in the shimmer of the aurora borealis, for two nights running, they observed the outlines of a human face, with beard and sidelocks. Violent arguments broke out over the identity of the bearded sage in the sky, whetehr or not the face was smiling (or merely suffering from a mild attack of gas), and the meaning of the weird manifestation. And just last week, amid the panic and feathers of a kosher sluaghterhouse on Zhitlovsky Avenue, a chicken turned on the shochet as he raised his ritual knife and announced, in Aramaic, the imminent advent of Messiah. According to the Tog, the miraculous chicken offered a number of startling predictions, though it neglected to mention the soup in which, having once more fallen silent as God Himself, it afterward featured. Even the most casual study of the record, Landsman thinks, would show that strange times to be a Jew have almost always been, as well, strange times to be a chicken.
Given the set-up, this could’ve been a ridiculously gimmicky book, a sort of hundred thousand word Jewish joke. Chabon is too good a writer for that, though, and even aside from the novelty of the setting, this is a terrific book. He’s absolutely nailed the hard-boiled/ noir form– like all the best books in the tradition, it starts with a squalid and seemingly insignificant crime, and expands to reveal corruption at the deepest levels, both personal and political. And along the way, there are gun fights and car chases, and the intrepid hero is knocked unconscious several times, as the form demands.
At the same time, though, there is a story of redemption at the heart of the book, which gives it a much more uplifting ending than many classic hard-boiled novels. I thought it was a more enjoyable read than The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, though it doesn’t have quite the same scope.
This is really a terrific book, with rich atmosphere, great characters, and excellent plotting. And while the world Meyer Landsman inhabits is very different from our own, some of the plots and schemes that he unearths are eerily familiar and mirror modern political concerns. I recommend it very highly, and I’ll probably buy a copy after I return this one to the library.