The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon

I'll start by (as usual) proclaiming my ignorance in a whole raft of things related to this novel: this is the first book by Michael Chabon that I have read, I know nothing about Judaism and Yiddish, and the only things I know about Alaska I learned from watching Northern Exposure. And yet surprisingly, The Yiddish Policeman's Union was at no point hard work, never confusing, never made me feel like an outsider, but instead led me into the world and made it feel real.

The SF aspect of the novel stems from the world building: the story is set in an alternate history in which a Jewish state was created in Alaska after the second world war. Sitka is the region of Alaska handed over to the Jews in a temporary loan. I had to look on a map where Sitka is, I never knew that Alaska extended south in a weird little handle like that. The descriptions and build up of atmosphere of the Jewish Sitka is so utterly convincing that I can't quite imagine what the reality of that part of the world is.

There is another aspect of the story that is SF, it's on one hand fleeting, a dalliance, and on the other hand central to the plot. More, I won't say.

The wonder of this book is it's ability to marry beautiful witty addictive prose, characters who grow in realism with each page, an intriguing plot and a huge dollop of style.

The plot is surprising. I haven't read any hardboiled detective novels, nor any Raymond Chandler (yet another book sitting on the shelf), so I can't comment whether the plot outline is typical, but it certainly works. It starts with a murder, and then the plot unfolds. As the story opens up and begins to diverge somehow the focus becomes sharper and more personal. Until at the end it's a story about Detective Landsman trying to piece his life back together and recover some happiness.

The paperback edition which I have (published by Harper Perennial) not only has a cool cover but also a selection of extras at the rear, including an extended author biography, Michael Chabon's top ten genre authors, a piece republished from the New York Times following Chabon on a trip back to Alaska and Chabon's essay Guidebook To A Land Of Ghosts which sparked the whole Yiddish idea.

Somehow the book manages to be much, much more than the sum of its parts. It's a book in which you can reread sections of prose just for fun, it's a book in which I was eager to unravel the plot and surprised at the outcome, it's a book which portrayed a thoroughly complete and believable world and it's a book that left me thinking about it's main character long after the last page. Spellbinding stuff.