The Yiddish Policemen's Union

⚖The case for it

Chabon puts a hardboiled detective in a temporary Jewish settlement in Sitka, Alaska, and builds the alternate history out of what Landsman notices rather than out of explanation. Landsman himself is washed up and divorced and drinking, and readers find him “a relatable and interesting character” rather than a type; his ex-wife and his half-Tlingit partner get their own agendas. The sentences are the draw, since “Chabon plays well with words; crafting sentences of such loveliness,” and readers quote them at each other. A critic calls it “a page-turning noir, with a twist of Yiddish.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

A simile lands on every ordinary object until detractors call this a candidate for “the most overwritten novel” they have read, with “the text is befuddlingly flowery.” The unglossed Yiddish and Hebrew is a wall, and readers reread sentences or want a glossary. The alternate history arrives in slang and offhand reference that assumes context. The tense keeps switching between present and past. Similar-sounding names blur once the cast widens. And the case itself is thin scaffolding under the style, with “contrived, formulaic plot lines” holding it up.

— the honest librarian

9h

honest hours

13

sittings