The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

★★★★★

I have to admit, I had a few false starts before I really got into The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Even once I was committed, and even as the book, on the whole, got better and better, chapters frequently started slowly - though that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it allowed me to easily put the book down between chapters, so I was never at risk of losing sleep for the sake of reading this book.

During my first couple reading attempts, I was put off by the Yiddish words strewn generously about. I found myself looking up definitions online, which got to be kind of annoying, and then I resorted to inferring meanings from context. It wasn't until I was at least half-way through the book that I realized there is a glossary in the back! (This is not the first time I've been burned by discovering too late a useful resource at the back of a fiction book. From now on, I'm going to make a habit of thumbing through the back of a book for useful appendices before beginning to read it.) Anyway, with glossary at hand, I was pleased to discover that I had appropriately understood most of the Yiddish words I encountered, which probably is more a testament to Chabon's writing than my reading skills.

Once I got used to Chabon's jaunty writing style, I was hooked. The pages are filled with clever metaphors, and rather than tire of them, I couldn't get enough. I felt smart for understanding Chabon's humor, but I didn't feel like Chabon was contriving to make me feel smart; he just really assumed, while writing the book, that anyone reading his book would be smart enough to get it.

Chabon deftly created and populated a believable imaginary world of displaced Jews in Sitka, Alaska. He gave life - albeit, a dreary, lonely, and at times pathetic one, but a life nonetheless - to a place where a new generation of Jews grew to call home. (Other books set in real-life locations don't do even half as good a job giving the reader an authentic feel for a place.)

Chess plays a central role in the book, and to Chabon's credit, he doesn't belabor the topic. I can easily imagine a similar book in which the author drones on and on about various styles of chess, strategies, historical players, etc., anything to try to bring chess into the forefront. Thankfully, Chabon spared us. Instead, he carefully positioned chess just outside the main focus, but not quite in the background. You get the feeling that chess will somehow help solve the murder case, but you have to keep reading to find out how.