Rachel's Random Recommendation #28: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007) by Michael Chabon

I have to admit, this is one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen on a book. Ever. And the story between the covers? Equally fantastic!

This, my first Chabon novel, was recommended to me by a good friend a couple of years ago. I had wanted to read Chabon, but my TBR pile was huge and I just never got around to it. Until I finally went out and snagged a copy of YPU.

Review: Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

Let me first say that Telegraph Avenue (Harper Collins, 2012) is quite a bit different from the other Chabon novel I've read, namely, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I mean, one is about an alternate universe in which Jews settled in Alaska instead of Israel after the Holocaust and all kinds of weird stuff happens, while the other is about two present-day Oakland families (one white, one black) and their complicated personal, financial, and legal tangles.

And yet, the thread that joins these two novels comes in the form of Chabon's ecstatic prose and living, breathing characters. In Telegraph Avenue, Chabon riffs (oh yes I did drop that musical pun) on the ever-present tension in this world between the "old" and the "new."