The Yiddish Policemen's Union--Michael Chabon

I've been having a few interviews lately, and I've been asked to do a spur of the moment booktalk as one of the questions. I've been using this book, so it deserves a blog entry to pass along the love.

In a Sitka, Alaska that has been a refugee station for Yiddish-speaking Jews for the past 60 years, a man is found dead of an overdose in a derelict hotel. Meyer Landesman, policeman and fellow down and outer, is asked by the manager to investigate. Despite being officially taken off the case, he and his partner/cousin Berko Shemets continue to poke around the case, venturing into the worlds of chessplayers, the ultrareligious, and various family secrets. Sitka's on the brink of being handed back to the States, and everyone is veering between hopelessness and action as they scramble to find sanctuary before being kicked out of the community they've managed to create.

It's a wonderfully drawn world. I was about ready to buy a plane ticket to Sitka before remembering it's not really an Eastern European shetl with extra blintzes and snow. You've got great descriptions and writing, like this:

"The Taytesh-Shemets family lives in the Dnyeper, on the twenty-fourth floor. The Dneyper is round as a stack of pie tins. Many of its residents, spurning fine views of Mount Edgecombe's collapsed cone, the gleaming Safety Pin, or the lights of the Untershat, have enclosed their curving balconies with storm windows and louvers in order to gain an extra room. The Taytesh-Shemetses did that when the baby came along: the first baby. Now both little Taytesh-Shemetses sleep out there, stashed away on the balcony like disused skis." (36)

I'm hoping for a sequel of sorts concentrating on the Taytesh-Shemetses--Berko and his scrappy wife Esther-Malke are worth further exploration and I found their relationship more interesting that that of Landesman and his ex-wife.

So who would this appeal to? People who like noir, mystery, richly drawn characters, alternate history, Jewish culture/Jewish fiction, exotic locales, and are interested in a downbeat narrative.

I did have a problem with the book that's not precisely about the text. I've previously mentioned that I have certain issues with Chabon's wife Ayelet Waldman, who basically has no personal censor that would prompt her to keep certain business to herself ("oh, I hope my child is gay, I had an abortion, I am super special and bipolar, I have hot sex with my husband, I hate my mother-in-law"--dear god, shut up! Some things are personal!). And I also have problems when too much of an author's life makes it into a book. it just creeps me out. Let's just say the character of Meyer's ex-wife, Bina Gelbfish, bears a shocking physical resemblance to Waldman and the guilt over aborting a baby with a disability is a major character point for Landsman in the novel. This real life parallel made me uncomfortable.