Novelist Black (Peep Show, 1986, etc.) takes readers on an odd but affecting journey through Jewish history. A “bobeh myseh” is Yiddish for “grandmother’s tale,” that is, an old family story of dubious provenance, and An Impossible Life is really a series of such stories strung together. Leo Polishook, a writer whose mother has been institutionalized, finds himself searching his own past and that of his parents for a clue as to the roots of her insanity. Delving into his childhood memories, he recalls an ill-concealed adulterous relationship between her and her father’s friend Binzy. More than that, he begins working his way backward through the generations, through the manifold sufferings of East European Jews in the 19th and 18th centuries, as well as through the haunting tales of demonic possession and wonder rabbis, a genre familiar from the work of I.B. Singer, among others. Interspersed with these tales is a series of dialogues between Leo and the ghost of his father; these are anything but Hamlet-like, owing more to the Borscht Belt and Woody Allen than to the Bard of Avon. Black brings to all this narrative movement a tremendous joy in the sheer act of storytelling, piling on gangsters and children, musicians and peasants, adultery, insanity, pogroms, transmigrating souls, the whole of it with gusto. As a result, his wry, often enchanting mÇlange of Jewish history and myth is experienced as a collection of tall tales. Although the book’s structure seems rather ramshackle, the authorial voice has considerable charm. Brisk and often funny, marred a little by its structural weakness and an unsatisfying epilogue.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55921-222-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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