Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 410 pages too long October 12, 2008
The Yiddish Policemen's Union was, in my opinion 410 (paperback)
pages too long. To read this you have to know UK Yiddish,(I do)
USA Yiddish & USA police slang & street slang. How many of the
reviewers are this qualified? I think the newspaper reviews were
edited as I don't think the reviewers come into all the above
catorgories.I don't know any of my contemporary Jewish friends
who would call another a YID. I guess he has a loving mother
who purchased all his other work?
 Yes, it went on too long October 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Yes, it went on too long. Like a movie that can't seem to end without going down still a few more hairpin curves, this novel keeps piling on the adventures. But the novel has already said what it had to say about halfway through.
This is a very much overrated book by an overrated author. The premise is only partly original, as most of the plot is borrowed from other good and not so good mysteries, and the whole idea, of a temporary Jewish state in Alaska, is only mildly amusing. The author does not do enough with it. He does not do enough to IMAGINE this alternate universe very well. What does the Jewish Sitka really feel like and look like, and what does the existence of a homeland in exile really mean for people like the one the novel supposes would live in Sitka -- about these things we learn next to nothing. By the middle of the book we have even run out of Jewish jokes.
I wish Chabon had written a funnier book, and I wish at the same time that he had taken the book he was writing more seriously.
In a word, this book is a potboiler for the postmodern set, and nothing more.
 Alaska? No, she went of her own accordion... September 18, 2008
Jewish culture has always interested me. All the Jewish characters and actors and writers and comedians on television got to play with language in such intriguing ways when I was a kid, with that surly sense of humour, that I admired them so much: Jackie Mason, Shatner & Nimoy, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Belzer. And I love the sound of Yiddish. Meshugginer is one of my favourite words ever.
So I approached the Yiddish Policemen's Union with much joy, knowing that that wonderful take on life would be written so well here. Especially as Michael Chabon is one of those authors who always turns out something good.
The book is an alternate history peace in which Jewish refugees are not given Israel to live in at the end of the war, but instead move to Alaska. Meyer Landsman investigates the death of a young man with a strange charisma, and discovers that there is a threat to the Jewish nation and to the world, that neatly mirrors certain events in our world. Also, he has to contend with his ex-wife being his superior.
Part of the book is very much a detective story of the kind Dashiell Hammett or Robert Crais might write, but the alternate history and the binding of this with Jewish identity and culture draws the work a little higher. That there is a conspiracy at work is a little too formulaic, I think, but helps draw the novel to its conclusion, with its hope for the future.
The book has a great sense of humour, it's sharply written, with a good sense of location and living, breathing characters. Is it a detective novel with delusions of grandeur? Is it a literary novel that apes the popular style and deconstructs it to bring out the truth? Probably a bit of both, though I suspect that based on the interviews and reading lists in the back of book, that Chabon enjoys writing detective stories.
Either way, it's a fine read and well worth your time.
Hard work for us Gentiles September 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The "brilliant book" advertised seems to me to be an 'insider joke' for Jews,tiring to struggle through if one is not in the know.It is full of Yiddish,but with no glossary available..all right, one can guess,but it becomes frustrating ,not funny.
The Hasidic Jews one has heard of but they have a different name-or two, here. It really makes me wonder how many of the enthousiastic critics are actually Jews also.They seem to have no problem.
I just thought someone should warn the public.If I can bear to read more I may find out how they solve the murder,but most likely will drop off to sleep before then.
 Could the Messiah be a Junkie? August 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Yiddish Policeman's Union is all you have left when you are de-badged by your ex-wife in the Sitka, Alaska police force. Why no badge? Why are you still policing, sometimes in your underpants, as part of the frozen chosen? The YPU exists in a place where myths influence reality and jostle with humour, prodigal children, prejudices and wise cracks.
Like many officials, Detective Meyer Landsman is under pressure to close and file cases tidily but the hitman style murder of former chess prodigy Mendel Shpilman and bestower of `miracles' in the flea pit of a hotel Landsman also resides in ,does not sit well in the tidy pile.
This is a case Meyer can't leave alone, especially when he finds that Shpilman knew his recently deceased sister.
For me, the pace varies at times, I raced through the initial chapters however towards the end I was thinking phew! this is nearly over. This is my first Chabon novel so I'm not sure if this the norm or the exception?
Hope you are intrigued enough to take a punt. Read it, if you enjoy being out of cosy novel and love being taken somewhere where you least expect.
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