The Ministry of Special Cases
by Nathan Englander
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Book Reviews of The Ministry of Special Cases
Book Review: A trick and a blessing
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up Ministry of Special Cases at 10 p.m., figuring I would plow through 20 pages before falling asleep. Captivated by its peculiar melancholy and its ability to maintain a precise balance between optimism and resignation, I didn't stop turning pages until I got to the last one.
If you choose books for their clever and detailed plots, Ministry will disappoint you. But if you revel in complex characters and writing that transports you to a particular time and place, then Ministry will suck you in and keep you mesmerized.
The book works on many levels. For starters, it evokes the horrors of Argentina in the post-Peron period. But it goes far beyond historical fiction, interweaving themes of love--among family members, co-workers, and even strangers-- with topics ranging from class differences to Jewish alienation to loss and futility. At its core, it's a novel about the absurdity of existence. Englander manages to squeeze an epic into a few hundred pages, with a style that is unembellished yet poignant.
My only quibble with the book is that Pato, the family son, functions mostly as a literary device, exemplified by the opening graveyard scene in which he is serving as a counterbalancing weight for Kaddish's gravestone defacement. That image recurs throughout the book, as Pato mirrors and reacts to his parents but does not emerge as a fully realized character himself. We feel his parents' anguish when he is disappeared, but we don't miss him as a person.
But such flaws are minor, and do nothing to diminish the lyricism and the humor, which manages to stay on the sober side of slapstick. Any author who can spin phrases like "the seam where the seedy underground was sewn to the seat of power" and "if everyone believes the same lie, isn't it, maybe, the truth?" is worth your time.
Ministry of Special Cases will crawl into your head and haunt your dreams--if you can sleep after you finish it.
Book Review: In an age of rampant hyperbole, what is the word for genius?
Summary: 5 Stars
Nathan Englander's short story collection, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" received accolades and awards when it debuted five years ago, all well deserved. Now, after five-years, Englander offers his first novel, "The Ministry of Special Cases." If any thought that the fresh pathos laden voice of "Relief" was a fluke, "Ministry" will surely set them straight.
First, a brief review of the plot. The place is Argentina in the 70's under the reign of a military junta that snaps citizens up without paper work and recourse and then pretends as if they know nothing about them. In this surreal environment, where reality, memory, and the official story often conflict lives our main character, Kaddish Pozen, a Jewish son of a whore living on the outskirts of his community who supports his family by collecting fees from the descendants of unsavory deceased Jews who pay him to erase their ancestors name off of grave stones in the cemetery where criminals lay buried. The cast of characters we meet along the way are as many and varied as one can imagine, all touched and warped by the insanity of their world.
While the premise surely will prove irresistible to many readers, a few may question an author's ability to execute a tale layered with such a thick helping of symbolism. A credit to Englander's talent then that he not only succeeds, but does so with the sensitivity and humor that marks him as a young author of great potential. While every writer imagines themselves a unique voice, Englander's novel, with its characters facing problems far beyond their depth and often contrasting images at once frightening and absurd brings to mind Isaac Singer's work, clearly one of the author's inspirations.
Any effort to explain too much of this novel risks spoiling some of the fun of watching it uncoil. Suffice to say, I suspect in a few decades' people will recall fondly when they first discovered Mr. Englander's gift.
Book Review: It can happen here
Summary: 5 Stars
In retrospect, I am reminded of Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here, a broadly told story of the takeover of America and the suppression of its once-free press by a brutal police regime.
Well, it can happen here (witness the subtle and not-so-subtle progress during the George W. Bush regime), and it did happen in Argentina and other Latin American countries, i.e., the disappearance of our children who speak out, however covertly, against the violent tactics of a dictatorship.
The astonishing task that Nathan Englander has accomplished, after years of research, sets the story of such a disappearance within an impoverished Argentinian Jewish family. The parents of the young man who "disappears" are described as much by their language as by their actions. That the story puts a lower-class Jewish spin with graveyard humor on the story, one shared by tens of thousands of mostly Christian Latin American families, is simply the mechanism by which the author can best infuse humanity into the events that unfold.
One thinks of Kafka as the book progresses from logical, increasingly more frantic inquiries to frightening encounters with a brutal, secretive faux "Ministry of Special Cases" that alleges it can determine the whereabouts of missing people and return them to their families. The Ministry is but a cruel hoax, and violence spills over into the lives of the parents who are left bereft, the father to coax out of his sources the likely fate of his beloved son.
This is powerful writing, sensitive, informed, remarkable. This is a great book with unforgettable characters.
Book Review: A heartbreaking book of loss
Summary: 5 Stars
Kaddish Poznan is a desecrator of Jewish graves. However, he defaces the headstones of the long dead on request of their still living relatives. In a world where being Jewish or descended from a Jewish family is a hinderance Kaddish's work prospers. Kaddish (named after the Jewish prayer for the dead) is viewed with contempt not only by the people who hire him to do thier dirty work but also by his son.
It is 1976, the outset of Argentina's "Dirty War," in which nearly 30,000 students, union members and political opponents were "disappeared" by the military government. But Kaddish does not know this. Simple as a resident of Chelm his major concern is his battle for authority over his unruly child. He wants the boy to see that his father's abhorred profession fills their family belly. But the Junta is in action and Kaddish's life is soon affected as are thousands of families in Argentina. His wife, Lillian's slow disintegration after the disappearance of her child is vividly drawn as is Kaddish's desperation. This is a hearbreaking book of parents torn apart by the loss of their sons and daughters. It is is a beatifully written book whose lyrical language and horror will touch your heart with the grief no parent should have to endure. And this is all the worse for being based in fact, for being something that the world has so easily forgotten. Even today mothers and fathers in Argentina are demanding to know what happened to their children and this novel brings their sorrow quite shatteringly into the light.
Book Review: Funny and heartbreaking
Summary: 5 Stars
I really admire what Nathan Englander accomplishes in this book. He manages to hold together an almost slapstick comic tone while delivering a heartbreaking story. Even though the character's are presented at arm's length and are to a degree types, and even though his use of symbolism strays from the realistic (Kaddish literally erasing people's identities from gravestones and the nose reduction surgery as a metaphor for the Argentine dictatorship's erasure of people and the erasure of Jewish identity), I still felt moved by their fates. I was hesitant to read the book because I worried it would be too sad, or filled with descriptions of human rights abuses I didn't think I was up to reading at the time. But I found it hard to put the book down, and I found myself laughing much more than I expected given the themes and historical setting. I have friends who much prefer Nathan Englander's short stories to this novel, but my opinion is the opposite. While I find his stories hit or miss, this book is daring and a real achievement. I'm really looking forward to seeing what this author writes in the future.