The Yiddish Policeman's Detective Club

Novel by Michael Chabon

Two things:
1) Dang, I am a sucker for the book club selections at the library.
2) This is my first rant about a book on the blog.

So I picked up this book because the title was intriguing (see previous entries about my love for books set in other places). However, I had to Google the book and author to even figure out what was going on in the first few pages. Because for one thing, I know no Yiddish, which is sprayed all over the pages. And for another, the book is set in a fictional world that sounds real but makes you question your sanity. A Jewish state in Sitka, Alaska, that was settled after the new country of Israel was disbanded? Those things are not real. So I figured out. It's actually kind of a genius way of writing, getting to make up your own history but in a real world setting. And Michael Chabon is apparently kind of a genius author, but way too high brow for me. And, final straw, I hated the ending. It basically doesn't have one. So I threw the book across the room (you're welcome, Stefanie Johnson).

A few good things about the book are the characters and family relationships: everyone has known everyone forever or is related to or was married to everyone, so the back story is rich. Also the metaphors and imagery are amazing. I sometimes get tired of too much description and Chabon uses metaphor in about every line, but some of it is so real and just right. There's the pretty stuff, like "A badge of grass, a green broach pinned at the collarbone of the mountain." But there's also some dry humor, like the way it feels to ride in a very small airplane in turbulence: "All the pins and bolts came loose from Landsman's skeleton, and his head got turned around backward, and his arms fell off, and his eyeball rolled under the cabin heater." So great. I wish I could write that. But if I could, I'm pretty sure I'd put it in a book with a real ending.