Karen Sklar

Joshua Cohen is my new favorite writer

Reviewed: 05-17-22

I think Joshua Cohen is a genius. I’m not alone in this assessment. The subject matter is familiar ground although sometimes I wonder if I lived it as much I learned it immersing myself in the writing of the pantheon of Jewish writers -Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller and others, Certainly, everyone’s experience as a Jew is different but we do share the same gestalt, the same inside joke, if you will.

The Netanyahu reminds me so much of some of my favorite books which present “history” in its narrative. Such a book brings me to the limits of my knowledge of “history” and then it enters into a realm where I can’t really be sure whether it’s fact or fiction. And because each of these books are satire, somewhere in my mind, I remember, the book is planting facts in the story which may or may not be twisted but I don’t know because my knowledge of the subject matter is slight. I am in a way the most pliable reader, but always the skeptic, I’m always left wondering if I should be accepting these new “facts.” Whatever the author tells me could be true but I remember I’m reading satire so it could be false. If the book succeeds at a higher level it encourages me to actually go on to learn what is, at least, accepted history.

What the Netanyahu book does that is decidedly different is that it gives away the game, if you are paying any attention at all. A main character is a professor of revisionist history so the story he tells is supposed to be suspect.

(Of course all history is suspect and fraught with the biases inherent in the retelling so satire has fertile ground to explore.). Now I have to do a lot of google research to find out if Netanyahu, (father of Ben) was really a professor of revisionist history and whether the story of the political reason for the Iberian expulsion of the Jews is a real or bogus theory, if it is a theory netanyahu actually expounded or if it may be completely plausible. A book that leaves you so perplexed is challenging and entertaining on a special plain that probably appeals to my appreciation of puzzles.

Nabokov, Roth, Condon, Bellow, and Heller and others (who won’t be named since to do so would betray the depth of my ignorance) have all succeeded so well in this realm that they have left me with a very tenuous but amused grip on “history.”
Some of them probably were not even intending to do so.

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6 people found this helpful

What was that?

Reviewed: 07-13-21

A ridiculous story line that did indeed contain spanish words. Certainly not that much less difficult than an actual novel by Isabella Allende. Those are narrated very clearly for Spanish learners. No reason to listen to this drivel.

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Hard copy please

Reviewed: 01-21-18

The amateur narration really took the life out of the potent writing so evident when I read Nina Rigg’s blog. Still the collection of essays which Rigg’s infused with poetry deserve to reach the widest audience, so listen if you must, read if you can.

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A biographer's biography

Reviewed: 03-08-17

I can confess that I listened to this late into the night and fell asleep on more than one night. So, I can't say I read the whole thing. Nevertheless, a biography is in large part a collection of anecdotes so just about anywhere I picked up, the story was always interesting. It was quite similar to reading Joyce in that my book had no beginning and no end. It took place at night and, it sometimes had a dreamlike quality - maybe I was dreaming. And, just like Joyce, the parts I "got" were worth the read even if I didn't "get" everything. Unlike Joyce, I don't think I will reread his biography for fear I will fall asleep in the same places.

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3 people found this helpful

William Hurt is a terrible narrator

Reviewed: 06-17-13

Rereading this classic, would have been a complete pleasure but for William Hurt's flat performance. He did a good job with the characters' dialogue. As narrator, his odd cadence clashed with the tone of the book.

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2 people found this helpful

An Exercise in Suspending Disbelief

Reviewed: 03-17-10

I read this book at the urging of a friend and was willing to indulge the somewhat maudlin telling of an unlikely story for the chance to hear a version of what life might have been like in Brooklyn in the early 1900's, a chance to learn more about what my grandparents might have experienced themselves. Unfortuneately my bright but cynical son listened to about 15 minutes of it with me and was all too good at pointing out how soppy it was and he ruined it for me. From that point forward I couldn't help finding the book a somewhat preposterous fairytale instead of a realistic portrait of the past. These people were too good; fate was too predictable and well, you get the picture...

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