Customer Reviews

The End of the Jews: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am not Jewish, yet I enjoyed Adam Mansbach's moving multi-genererational novel immensely, and so, I suspect, will you. Certainly the novel is laced with references to Jewish customs, traditions, and even dishes (noodle kugel, anyone?), and it deals partly with the complex relationships between Jews and blacks. But ultimately the book is less about being Jewish than about being human. It is about closeness and aloofness. It is about what marriage does and doesn't accomplish. It is about friends and family and how difficult it sometimes is to extricate yourself from situations caused by those nearest to you. There is sadness and tension (and a modicum of sex), but there is also humor, and a chapter in which grandfather and grandson go on a graffiti expedition is simply a howl. In the end, you will find that it doesn't matter whether the characters are Jewish or Swedish or Brazilian or Martian: They and their hopes, dreams, and disappointments will linger long in your memory.

This novel is a rare treasure. It's beautifully written, daring, and wide-ranging in its concerns. More than anything, though, each and every character in the book is rendered with astounding empathy and insight. This is even more impressive given the range of the voices -- they are old and young, male and female, black and white. The End of the Jews weaves several stories together expertly and seamlessly. The best scenes here rival anything I've ever read, and the probing, subtle way the author explores identity and relationships -- between men and women, blacks and Jews, children and parents -- makes you remember why it is that we turn to fiction to begin with.

The writing is brilliant. I am not Jewish, but my "domestic partner" is. The opening of this book makes a writer like me ooze with jealousy. We meet Tristan, living in the Bronx, with all the other Jewish families in the apartment building. And we just know that he will be breaking out of "tradition"! You too might be thinking "Fiddler on the Roof." Then suddenly the reader is transplanted to Prague when it was under Soviet rule to a truly remarkable story--and it seems to be a separate story--of another sort-of Jewish family. But there are connections. Then out of nowhere, it seems, comes Tris in chapter three, a teenager, who is driving his mother mad, his mother being the daughter of the Tristan (hence Tris the grandson) from the first chapter. Oh, my. Poor Linda! The end of the Jews all right. This is just the most amazing book, and the pieces fall into place. It deserves more than five stars.

This is not a stereotypical immigrant novel that has been done and over-done. Mansbach provides us with some unforgettable characters, who stay with us long after the final page is read.

Dealing with the complexities between the black and Jewish communities is never going to be easy and the author provides an excellent and fascinating insight.

Above all, I have learned to look at spray-painted graffiti in a whole new way - and wonder if there is a can-carrying grandfather still out there.

As a huge fan of Adam Mansbach's previous novel, Angry Black White Boy, I came to this book with high hopes, as well as certain expectations. My expectations turned out to be entirely wrong -- but I loved this novel. Mansbach's previous book is a satire about race in America, and it's savagely funny, fast-paced, and often chilling. The End of the Jews, while still interested in big issues like race and culture, is a far more intimate and subtle book, full of fascinatingly complete characters whose emotional lives are rich and complicated.

I was especially impressed with the fullness of the main women, Amalia Farber and Nina Hricek -- maybe because I find it so rare for a young male writer like Mansbach to be capable of writing believable female characters. It was a bold move for this writer to follow up on a cult classic like Angry Black White Boy with a book so different -- focused on a family, set over most of the 20th century, with several protagonists. Sometimes The End of the Jews is very funny, but it's also a very beautiful meditation on art, love, and, ultimately, humanity. Its appeal, I think, is very wide. I'm 29, and I'm ordering it for both my mother and my grandfather!

The End of the Jews blew me away. It's stunning in its emotional honesty, in a way that reminded me of James Baldwin's masterpiece Another Country. It's a book that tackles big issues, like race and identity, but through a small lens: the life of one family over several generations. Mansbach gives us full characters whose struggles are vivid, whose victories and defeats feel real. The language is beautiful, too.

I read this book because I was hearing the author speak. While a little intriguing, this book is mostly full of very stereotypical characters who as one other reviewer noted, fairly shallowly drawn. The book is also a bit contrived and self-important. The author apparently spent time when he was quite young with hip-hop bands and has incorporated this (and some other family history) into different aspects the characters, but it doesn't ring true or matter. I plowed through it until the end, but did not find it satisfying or worthwhile.

I thought the title was especially intriguing, but after I have read the book, not sure that it is especially appropriate. The book is more about family relationships and the price one pays for one's art regardless of ethic or religious identity. I loved the first chapter-- the historical one. Thought the second chapter was interesting (Czech mother and daughter) but could see no relationship to the first, and almost quit with the third chapter (graffiti artists). However, I stuck with it and I'm glad I did.

Some of the events in the book I find a bit of a stretch but overall it fits together pretty well considering the diverse individuals coming together. I'm not an "artist" and I'm not Jewish, but could certainly relate to some of the marital struggles. Good to know that those are universal. Life, and certainly marriage, isn't easy so you might as well savor the good times when they appear and just work to weather the bad when those are around.

I'm a fan of multigenerational epics. Seeing the same characters through the eyes of different generations intrigues me. But The End of the Jews doesn't quite pull this off.

At the plot's center is the bond between grandfather and grandson. It's warm and inviting in the way good buddy stories are. Their bond is based on being perceived as misfits and underachievers relative to their own generations.

The literary cliches employed by the novel are really pretty stale for how much time they get. The establishment type who champions his barely willing subordinate's career? The kid from the sticks whose life is changed by his first drink and jazz club? The journeymen musicians who travel the world but can barely scrape by?

Also, there's a middle generation barely touched upon that feels like a hole in the novel.

The several twists towards the end of the book fall a bit flat. To avoid spoiling anything, I suppose they make sense in the context of a difficult, loveless marriage. But they seemed more like grasps for salaciousness, then a conceivable step for the characters to take.

Returning to the positive side, the author clearly has a love for the lost Jewish immigrant culture of New York. Immigrant families making room in their already hard lives for the son to study instead of work. The amazement of a kid cloistered in the Bronx whose trips to Manhattan are full of wonder. It is lovingly recreated.

And the scene where the Beasty Boys aspirant DJs a Bar Mitzvah of adoring kids who see him as the coolest thing ever? Great.

Very interesting concept in this book. Using it for a book club.
shipped timely and in great condition.