Almost inadvertently, I plunged into another novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer - "The Manor and The Estate". Beware if you pick up one of his books. Singer has that rarest of gifts in a novelist - the ability to hook you from the very first sentence. "After the unsuccessful rebellion of 1863, many Polish noblemen were hanged; others - Count Wladislaw Jampolski among them - were banished to Siberia. The Czar's soldiers led the Count in chains through the streets of Jampol, the town which bore his name." This is how "The Manor and The Estate" begins. Immediately, we are in the thick of it. Singer wastes no words. His narrative is fast paced, but he is capable, in one or two simple brushstrokes, to describe action, character and atmosphere. The novel is set in the vanished world of the Hasidim in pre-WWII Europe. It deals with Singer's familiar concerns: jews and gentiles, orthodoxy and heresy, poverty and money and always men and women and their complicated love affairs. Narrow concerns, provincial settings? In Singer's hands, stories of universal interest, gripping, moving, tellling and wise.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Almost inadvertently, I plunged into another novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer - "The Manor and The Estate". Beware if you pick up one of his books. Singer has that rarest of gifts in a novelist - the ability to hook you from the very first sentence. "After the unsuccessful rebellion of 1863, many Polish noblemen were hanged; others - Count Wladislaw Jampolski among them - were banished to Siberia. The Czar's soldiers led the Count in chains through the streets of Jampol, the town which bore his name." This is how "The Manor and The Estate" begins. Immediately, we are in the thick of it. Singer wastes no words. His narrative is fast paced, but he is capable, in one or two simple brushstrokes, to describe action, character and atmosphere. The novel is set in the vanished world of the Hasidim in pre-WWII Europe. It deals with Singer's familiar concerns: jews and gentiles, orthodoxy and heresy, poverty and money and always men and women and their complicated love affairs. Narrow concerns, provincial settings? In Singer's hands, stories of universal interest, gripping, moving, tellling and wise.
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