The End of the Jews

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.

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!

Mansbach, Adam. "The End of the Jews", Spiegel and Grau, 2008. A Look at Human Frailty Amos Lassen Adam Mansbach has written a brave new novel of people searching for truth and the truth that they seek is that destruction is the necessary consequence of creation. Styled as a family epic, the irreverence of "The End of the Jews" seems to bring about an entire new genre of writing as the book is full of wit and exceedingly beautiful prose. The story is about the family Brodsky and how each member of the clan faces a seemingly impossible choice. They must choose between the people they love and "the art that sustains them". As the book moves between time and space, the lives of the three heroes--Tristan Brodsky, Nina Hricek, and Tris Freedman--who are separated by generations and geography--come together and we see that their lives are being lived on parallel scales. Tristan, having been raised in the Bronx during the great Depression, becomes a mover and shaker of American culture but in doing so he "suffocates" his wife, a poetess, who has her own secret world. Nina manages to escape the "horrors" of Czechoslovakian communism by running off with a group of Black musicians only to find herself still trapped but this time by a dead-end love affair instead of political ideology. Tris is Tristan's grandson and Nina's lover is a graffiti artist and a revolutionary unbridled by specifics who uses his family history to create his art. As the stories come together, each character realizes that his survival requires the sacrifice of someone else. The title perhaps suggests that it is necessary to be familiar with Judaism to read this novel and while it does have a great many Jewish references, the book really deals with the relationships between Jews and Blacks but it ultimately is more about being human than being Jewish. There are several other themes going on as well--warmth vs. iciness, the meaning of marriage, family and friends and our relationships with others. There is a great deal of humor in the book as well and as much compassion. Each character is portrayed with deep insight and we are able to empathize and here is a book that does what literature is supposed to do--give the reader something to think about. Beautifully honest, lyrical in tone, moving in subject matter and eloquence, "The End of the Jews" is a tough look at the way we live.

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.

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.