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chomijiIn our world, in 1938, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes suggested that Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe be settled in Alaska. The measure didn't pass — but in Chabon's book, it did. The number of Jews killed in the Holocaust in this AU was considerably fewer, but the modern state of Israel did not survive its war for independence. In the 70 years since, the Jews of Sitka have developed a Yiddish-speaking culture on the fringe of the frequently frozen wilderness of the north, but now their little world is coming to an end as the U.S. prepares to reclaim the District and cast out the vast majority of its residents. Unsurprisingly, many of the more religious residents of Sitka are once again speaking of the coming of the Messiah.
Against this End Times backdrop, police detective Meyer Landsman becomes obsessed with a murder all too close to home: a chess-playing junkie who was shot execution-style in Landsman's rundown apartment building. Who was this ruined man, and why was he killed? Is there a significance to the chess problem that was left set up in his room? And will Landsman, who has been told by his new supervisor — who is, just incidentally, his ex-wife Bina, for whom he's still carrying a king-sized torch — to consider the case closed because they have to have everything shipshape by the time the U.S. government takes over, ever solve the mystery?
I was reluctant to start this because it sounded too depressing, but I liked it a lot. The grimly funny prose, with its Yiddish sentence structure, just flowed off the page for me, and I found myself grinning or snickering several times each chapter. So it was a shock to look at Amazon's reader reviews — and find that significant numbers of people couldn't get into the book at all, found the language offensive or incomprehensible, and thought it too grim to finish. I guess I need to add YMMV. In my case, this is told in one of several accents with which I grew up (many of my New York cousins and their parents and our grandparents and great-aunts and uncles sounded more or less like this), as well as the style of humor to which I was accustomed. The idea of making terrible, cutting, and even vulgar jokes and humorous insults as the world is ending around you is an old tradition of our people, but clearly it doesn't work for everyone.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:54 pm (UTC)The local Tlingit actually get quite a lot of ink. Tensions between the two communities were very high in the early days of the settlement, a slow-smoldering near-war that culminated in a number of incidents of open violence. Things are at an uneasy peace in the current day of the story.
Actually, most of this bit of the history comes through a very important secondary character: Landsman's partner and first cousin Berko Shemets, son of Landsman's paternal uncle and a Tlingit woman who is killed in the violence. He's arguably the most well-adjusted and certainly the most endearing character in the book: a big bear of a guy with a wife and two small children who is constantly appalled at Landsman's excesses but is always there for him anyway. (That's not to say he doesn't have his own issues: massive resentment of his father, for example, and he's not too thrilled when he hears his wife is pregnant for the third time - their apartment is pretty damn crowded as it is.)
There's also an adventure outside the Sitka border where Landsman's ass is saved by the local Tlingit police chief, who is not happy to find Landsman out in his area.
[ETA - Son of a bItch! LJ screwed my favorite Gojyo icon! I am SO PISSED!]
(LJ weirdness)
Date: 2009-02-28 11:46 pm (UTC)Look! He's back!
Something weird has been happening where someone else's icon(s) get cached on LJ's servers in place of yours, so you go to put in your icon (or look at your icons page), and your icon is gone. It's actually been happening to various people for a couple of months now (see thei open issues list - it's listed as userpics - I'm surprised you haven't run into it, at least on someone else's.
But look, they fixed mine!
I was so insulted that it happened to this particular icon, which is currently my just-about-favorite.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 03:43 am (UTC)I don't know if that kind of humor is necessarily a Jewish thing. It seems a little more general east coast to me. It's certainly always been part of my life. Or it could be that east coast culture is more in touch/influenced by Jewish culture than say, the Midwest (speaking of which...they seriously don't have Jewish people here in Wisconsin. It's very strange.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:42 pm (UTC)Yeah, he is pretty hot, isn't he? Between him and Neil Gaiman, who need Hollywood actors? Let's hear it for brainy, witty guys!
I think you're probably right about the East Coast. Also, I expect that my f-list is pretty much OK with this kind of stuff - from the AU setting to the non-English vocabulary to the type of humor. When I write stuff like book review on LJ, though, I try to think about people finding the reviews at random through Google.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 01:50 pm (UTC)(Reza Aslan)
Date: 2009-02-28 11:48 pm (UTC)Oooh, very cute! But young enough to make me feel inappropriate! Gaiman and Chabon are much more my age.
Re: (Reza Aslan)
Date: 2009-03-01 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 02:03 am (UTC)Dude, I made it through Clockwork Orange, I bet this is a cakewalk in comparison!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 02:55 am (UTC)(Oy vey!)
Date: 2009-02-28 11:50 pm (UTC)Get with the program! That's meshugganeh talk!
;-)
(Yiddish ... exotic?)
Date: 2009-02-28 11:59 pm (UTC)No, of course not!
(Boychick, chutzpah, glitch, kibitz, klutz, nebbish, maven, noodge, nosh, shlep, shlock, shmooze, shtick, tush, zaftig ... and those are only the most common.)
The trouble is, I don't think this was pitched in most venues as either an AU or a detective noire. Chabon has attained such respect that (for instance) book club readers who would normally avoid either of those genres ended up reading it, and just weren't ready to wrap their heads around so much vocabulary they didn't know right off, or such attitudes. Whereas anyone who regularly reads good historical fiction or SF&F is used to reading things with vocabulary that has to be taken in stride - either deciphered from context or, yes, looked up (oh noes!).
Re: (Yiddish ... exotic?)
Date: 2009-03-01 02:06 am (UTC)