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Review: Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007)
This book reminded me why I don't usually like to read detective stories. While this book is different because of its alternate history background, it exhibited many issues that I see with pop fiction that is written by and aimed for men. Therefore, this has got to be a do not recommend.
Spoilers.
Story
Meyer and his cousin and investigation partner Berko investigate the murder that happened in the hotel that Meyer was living in. It also just so happens that their commanding officer is Bina, Meyer's ex-wife. As our characters dig deeper into the murder, they discover some political secrets. But in the end, it turns out that the murderer was Berko's own father, who'd killed the victim by the victim's own request.
I started losing interest when Meyer started to uncover the conspiracy, at that super secret building where Naomi had flown. At this point, I felt that the story was getting away from the murder mystery. Not that a murder mystery can't have interesting detours, but this one was not interesting to me.
I felt that the first half of the book or so were still interesting, when Meyer was going around town and questioning various members of the community. We got a sense of what Sitka and its people were like. It wasn't handled perfectly, but I found it much more interesting than the more high level conspiracy plot that Meyer and Berko had discovered later on. I think the writer expanded on it a bit too much, to the point that it overshadowed the murder mystery in the second half of the book.
Meyer solved the mystery by going back to the basics, evaluating the evidence at the scene of the crime, which goes on to show that the paramilitary operation was far more than we needed to know. It was fine to show our characters stumbling upon the plot, I just wished it was cut down.
So overall, I didn't love the story because the second half focused too much on the paramilitary group without linking it back to Mendel every so often. In the second half, I often felt like our characters forgot about Mendel. I understand that such a paramilitary operation would have been huge and very shocking to the community, but I just wasn't interested. I had come into this book wanting a murder mystery and the murder mystery part itself was not very intriguing.
When it comes to the world building, I was entertained. I enjoyed reading about Meyer going around town and speaking to members of the community. I think that learning about Meyer's family also gave me an idea of how Sitka came to be. I'm not familiar with Jewish culture and history so I can't say whether the Jewish mindset and people were accurately written, but nothing popped out to me as unrealistic or irking to read.
Writing
I have a lot of gripes with the writing.
In the first half of the book, while I did say that I thought the world building was alright, I did have a tough time reading because Chabon was introducing several new characters every chapter. Chabon might have introduced four new characters in a scene but Meyer might only have spoken to one of them in-depth. It was especially confusing at the beginning because I wasn't sure which characters were going to be important and which weren't. I think that if Chabon had focused more attention on fewer characters, I might have been more interested in the conspiracy, as we found out that characters that Meyer had interviewed before were involved. But they were just a couple of names among numerous that I had forgotten.
One of the major downfalls of this story was the characters. I was not interested in them, and they had no chemistry with one another. I'll talk more about the characters below.
But one thing that drove me up the wall was Meyer's interactions with Bina. The only way he seemed to be able to think of her was sexually. When we first met Bina, as Meyer and Berko's commanding officer, Chabon OF COURSE had to talk about what her breasts looked like. There was one scene in which he'd gotten Bina to turn around and he looked down her shirt, and I was so disgusted. The last time I'd read a mainstream pop fiction detective story, it contained similarly yucky male-oriented writing and I could not believe that the character nor the author were full grown men.
Whenever Meyer thought about the good times with Bina, he'd always talk about how they'd had sex, how he remembered her body, etc. The reason they'd divorced was because of issues that arose after they lost their child. It was hinted at several times during the novel, but it wasn't really talked about until the end and even then, I'm not sure what exactly happened. Something about Meyer not being able to get over it but Bina being able to.
I can't think that Meyer sees Bina as anything other than a fuckbuddy.
I'd read a book by Ian Rankin that had this kind of male-oriented writing, and it'd turned me off from mainstream detective fiction for years. And this book by Michael Chabon will turn me off from the genre for more years to come.
One last thing that bothered me was how often Chabon used the word "sweetness," often in a condescending or commanding tone. Bina used this word a lot, so at first I thought it was just a quirk of hers. When she was trying to convince someone to let her enter a building or do a search, she might flash her badge and call the security guard sweetness, probably Chabon's attempt at making her look cool. But then another character used the term sweetness and then I realized that that was just Chabon's own quirks.
Characters
Meyerle Landsman
Meyer is our main detective, and one of the blandest men ever. Chabon tried so hard to make Meyer charming but making him say funny things once in a while is not a personality. We know Meyer was not in the best condition, being a divorced alcoholic living in a hotel. But we were never given an explanation as to why other than "he got divorced." Even if he was a loser, explaining why he was a loser would have made me like him more, even if I thought he was a loser.
We got his backstory, and funnily enough, I think all of his relatives were more interesting than him, including Berko and Hertz. Perhaps it's because Meyer was never given the opportunity to reflect, or to inject his personal thoughts and biases.
And as I mentioned above, Meyer exhibited some gross man behaviour that I really could do without. Chabon did not successfully convince me that Meyer was ever in love with his wife. If he did, he might have remembered things about her like her habits, or what she was like when she smiled or laughed. Instead, all we ever got was how she looked and how Meyer and her used to have so much sex all the time.
And Meyer had zero chemistry with Bina. Bina was not a good character either, more on that later. I think Chabon was trying to make their conversations witty, but that doesn't work when neither character has a personality.
Berko Shemets/Johnny Bear
As mentioned, Berko was a more interesting character than Meyer. Part of it might have been because we actually saw him interact with his family.
We found out that Berko and his father Hertz had a bad relationship because Berko had grown up with his Tlingit mother, and when she died, Hertz had dumped Berko with Meyer's family.
When Berko's wife Ester-Malke revealed to him that she was pregnant again, Berko got angry, presumably because they already had too many kids and couldn't afford another.
I don't think that I'd necessarily like Berko in real life, but showing us these personal things about him gave me a better sense of what Berko was like as a character, as opposed to Meyer who was a blank slate, whose family members were all dead, and was divorced from the supposed love of his life.
Bina Gelbfish
Bina was supposed to be something of a girlboss but like Meyer, she suffered from no-personality syndrome. She seemed like a very no-nonsense woman, which is nice. But she just...felt so bland to me. When she was doing anything, it felt like she was just going through the motions. Like Meyer, she never injected her personality or her biases into how she behaved.
Overall
This book was overall pretty disappointing to me. I came here for a murder mystery novel, and I came away with a bad murder mystery, and a story that exhibited traits that made me stay away from detective mystery stories.
Spoilers.
Story
Meyer and his cousin and investigation partner Berko investigate the murder that happened in the hotel that Meyer was living in. It also just so happens that their commanding officer is Bina, Meyer's ex-wife. As our characters dig deeper into the murder, they discover some political secrets. But in the end, it turns out that the murderer was Berko's own father, who'd killed the victim by the victim's own request.
I started losing interest when Meyer started to uncover the conspiracy, at that super secret building where Naomi had flown. At this point, I felt that the story was getting away from the murder mystery. Not that a murder mystery can't have interesting detours, but this one was not interesting to me.
I felt that the first half of the book or so were still interesting, when Meyer was going around town and questioning various members of the community. We got a sense of what Sitka and its people were like. It wasn't handled perfectly, but I found it much more interesting than the more high level conspiracy plot that Meyer and Berko had discovered later on. I think the writer expanded on it a bit too much, to the point that it overshadowed the murder mystery in the second half of the book.
Meyer solved the mystery by going back to the basics, evaluating the evidence at the scene of the crime, which goes on to show that the paramilitary operation was far more than we needed to know. It was fine to show our characters stumbling upon the plot, I just wished it was cut down.
So overall, I didn't love the story because the second half focused too much on the paramilitary group without linking it back to Mendel every so often. In the second half, I often felt like our characters forgot about Mendel. I understand that such a paramilitary operation would have been huge and very shocking to the community, but I just wasn't interested. I had come into this book wanting a murder mystery and the murder mystery part itself was not very intriguing.
When it comes to the world building, I was entertained. I enjoyed reading about Meyer going around town and speaking to members of the community. I think that learning about Meyer's family also gave me an idea of how Sitka came to be. I'm not familiar with Jewish culture and history so I can't say whether the Jewish mindset and people were accurately written, but nothing popped out to me as unrealistic or irking to read.
Writing
I have a lot of gripes with the writing.
In the first half of the book, while I did say that I thought the world building was alright, I did have a tough time reading because Chabon was introducing several new characters every chapter. Chabon might have introduced four new characters in a scene but Meyer might only have spoken to one of them in-depth. It was especially confusing at the beginning because I wasn't sure which characters were going to be important and which weren't. I think that if Chabon had focused more attention on fewer characters, I might have been more interested in the conspiracy, as we found out that characters that Meyer had interviewed before were involved. But they were just a couple of names among numerous that I had forgotten.
One of the major downfalls of this story was the characters. I was not interested in them, and they had no chemistry with one another. I'll talk more about the characters below.
But one thing that drove me up the wall was Meyer's interactions with Bina. The only way he seemed to be able to think of her was sexually. When we first met Bina, as Meyer and Berko's commanding officer, Chabon OF COURSE had to talk about what her breasts looked like. There was one scene in which he'd gotten Bina to turn around and he looked down her shirt, and I was so disgusted. The last time I'd read a mainstream pop fiction detective story, it contained similarly yucky male-oriented writing and I could not believe that the character nor the author were full grown men.
Whenever Meyer thought about the good times with Bina, he'd always talk about how they'd had sex, how he remembered her body, etc. The reason they'd divorced was because of issues that arose after they lost their child. It was hinted at several times during the novel, but it wasn't really talked about until the end and even then, I'm not sure what exactly happened. Something about Meyer not being able to get over it but Bina being able to.
I can't think that Meyer sees Bina as anything other than a fuckbuddy.
I'd read a book by Ian Rankin that had this kind of male-oriented writing, and it'd turned me off from mainstream detective fiction for years. And this book by Michael Chabon will turn me off from the genre for more years to come.
One last thing that bothered me was how often Chabon used the word "sweetness," often in a condescending or commanding tone. Bina used this word a lot, so at first I thought it was just a quirk of hers. When she was trying to convince someone to let her enter a building or do a search, she might flash her badge and call the security guard sweetness, probably Chabon's attempt at making her look cool. But then another character used the term sweetness and then I realized that that was just Chabon's own quirks.
Characters
Meyerle Landsman
Meyer is our main detective, and one of the blandest men ever. Chabon tried so hard to make Meyer charming but making him say funny things once in a while is not a personality. We know Meyer was not in the best condition, being a divorced alcoholic living in a hotel. But we were never given an explanation as to why other than "he got divorced." Even if he was a loser, explaining why he was a loser would have made me like him more, even if I thought he was a loser.
We got his backstory, and funnily enough, I think all of his relatives were more interesting than him, including Berko and Hertz. Perhaps it's because Meyer was never given the opportunity to reflect, or to inject his personal thoughts and biases.
And as I mentioned above, Meyer exhibited some gross man behaviour that I really could do without. Chabon did not successfully convince me that Meyer was ever in love with his wife. If he did, he might have remembered things about her like her habits, or what she was like when she smiled or laughed. Instead, all we ever got was how she looked and how Meyer and her used to have so much sex all the time.
And Meyer had zero chemistry with Bina. Bina was not a good character either, more on that later. I think Chabon was trying to make their conversations witty, but that doesn't work when neither character has a personality.
Berko Shemets/Johnny Bear
As mentioned, Berko was a more interesting character than Meyer. Part of it might have been because we actually saw him interact with his family.
We found out that Berko and his father Hertz had a bad relationship because Berko had grown up with his Tlingit mother, and when she died, Hertz had dumped Berko with Meyer's family.
When Berko's wife Ester-Malke revealed to him that she was pregnant again, Berko got angry, presumably because they already had too many kids and couldn't afford another.
I don't think that I'd necessarily like Berko in real life, but showing us these personal things about him gave me a better sense of what Berko was like as a character, as opposed to Meyer who was a blank slate, whose family members were all dead, and was divorced from the supposed love of his life.
Bina Gelbfish
Bina was supposed to be something of a girlboss but like Meyer, she suffered from no-personality syndrome. She seemed like a very no-nonsense woman, which is nice. But she just...felt so bland to me. When she was doing anything, it felt like she was just going through the motions. Like Meyer, she never injected her personality or her biases into how she behaved.
Overall
This book was overall pretty disappointing to me. I came here for a murder mystery novel, and I came away with a bad murder mystery, and a story that exhibited traits that made me stay away from detective mystery stories.