FICTIONJeff Collins, MD of Spokane, a past president of WSMA and widely read, offers the following review to members. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
By Michael Chabon Michael Chabon is a talented writer whose first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1988 and whose 2001 novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavaliler and Clay was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. This is his first novel since that work.
Think of Sam Spade as written by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The setting is a completely fictionalized Sitka, Alaska, where the U.S. permitted European Jews fleeing Hitler to settle after the 1948 collapse of the emerging Jewish homeland in Israel. Their language remains primarily Yiddish. After 60 years the U.S. has decided to reclaim Alaska and the “reversion” is to occur two months hence, with Jews expected to go elsewhere. Washed-up cop Meyer Landsman is awakened in the fleabag hotel where he resides. “He had a perpetual flush, close set eyes, a second and hints of a third chin, without clear benefit of a first,” writes Chabon.
What is Landsman to do when a heroin-addicted, chess-crazed resident gets murdered in his room at the hotel? Landesman enlists his half-Tlingit cousin Berko Shemets (a detective), but they are thwarted by their boss who happens to be Landsman’s ex-wife, the only person he has ever loved.
Of course, Landsman disobeys and throws himself into an unauthorized investigation, and soon runs into more formidable obstacles in the form of a conservative Jewish mafia and U.S. intelligence agencies. Beginning with a half-completed chess game as a clue, the plot is complex and the resolution clever, with appropriate false leads and disguised endings and without reliance on clumsy coincidence or trickery. This book can be quite satisfying as a detective novel, but a writer as gifted as Chabon holds more. This is a murder story, to be sure, but it is also about a superman with a hidden identity, a sort of Jewish Clark Kent. It offers a love story, an homage to 1940s noir and an exploration of mysteries of exile and redemption. Set in the present time, the current troubles in the Mideast create natural speculation on alternative histories. Chabon’s questions are also clearly political, and suggest his theory on U.S.-Israeli foreign policy.
It would probably be helpful to know some Yiddish and some chess. Neither, however, is essential to enjoy this inventive black comedy. On Chesil Beach
By Ian McEwan Ian McEwan is one of today’s leading writers of fiction, and I’ve been reading his work for a decade, beginning in 1998 with his novel Amsterdam. I reviewed his Saturday in the November/December 2007 WSMA Reports. I’ve also read his Atonement, which was subsequently made into a film and has been nominated for an Oscar. His writing is smooth, detailed and controlled.
In On Chesil Beach McEwan tells the story of Edward and Florence, who marry at age 23 and 22 respectively, and travel to Chesil Beach for their honeymoon. They finish their awkward dinner at the hotel, and anticipate the first night of their honeymoon with mixed emotions. Both are virgins, and each has reasons for anxiety.
Set in 1962—prior to the sexual revolution—Edward is shy, inexperienced and understandably nervous, but at least a bit upbeat and enthusiastic about his prospects.
Florence views her immediate future with fear and repulsion. Her only source of guidance is a handbook, which only serves to heighten her apprehension.
They believe their marriage will bring them happiness and the freedom to realize the plans “heaped up before them in the misty future.” Despite that joyful promise, neither is able to effectively suppress the anxieties about the moment when, after dinner, they must “reveal themselves fully to one another” on the narrow four-poster bed with its pure white covers.
McEwan says: “Where he merely suffered conventional first-night nerves, she experienced a helpless disgust as palpable as seasickness.”
Aside from brief appearances by the bride’s parents and a couple of serving boys, there are no other characters, underscoring the isolation of the principals. Florence says of herself: “She lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no one ever mentioned it, an immediate sensual connection to people and events, and to her own needs and desires…”
Fears about sex and the couple’s inability to discuss those fears form the center of the story. The defining moment, of which McEwan is such a master, takes place at midpoint in the book. His description of their disastrous efforts on the marital bed can best be described as forensic and is followed, in the last chapter, by their explosive confrontation on Chesil Beach.
Although my synopsis might sound like something from the back page of a tabloid, McEwan takes his simple set-up and works wonders with it. At times, it reads like a horror story, with the trajectory of events completely out of control and the ultimate outcome so unnecessary. However, almost from the first sentence, the reader feels tremendous sympathy for these two young people. They are so clumsy, so naïve, so desperately in love. But, somehow, they are unable to reach across the divide between proper but unmarried men and women, incapable of talking through their desires and fears, unable to change course.
McEwan has written a rich and evocative novel, with typical compassion and attention to detail. His prose is masterful, as over the course of two hundred pages he charts the ebb and flow of the couple’s sad story without cheap irony or crude humor. Instead he crafts a story full of insight and compassion that the reader is compelled to share.
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