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Aug 02, 2008

G rated it:

Problematic. Englander is an adept, even-handed writer, but not an amazing stylist; worse, I never believed that the story was set in Argentina at all (it would have been better as a Kafka-esque "no place"), and I didn't find it as engaging as I would have hoped. But a good effort nonetheless.

Upon rereading, I was struck by many of the scenes but underwhelmed by the lack of cohesion - the whole was less than the sum of its parts.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 18, 2009

Susan rated it:

I have been interested in “the disappeared” (Los Desaparecidos ) of Argentina since I visited that country in the mid-90ies several times and saw the mothers marching in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada (pink house, president’s residence and seat of government). That’s what drew me to this book.
The setting is Buenos Aires in 1976. The main characters are Kaddish Poznan and his wife, Lillian. They are not only Jewish, but Kaddish is literally a hijo de puta (son of a whore) and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2010

Nate rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 20, 2008

Erika Jo rated it:

Once again, a hip, young, Jewish, Brooklyn-ish* novelist. I told myself to take it slowly, reading them consecutively would be like lighting one cigarette off the back of another. Don't even get me started on my decision to read an excellent poetry book by the 24-year-old Tao Lin directly following this read (inspiring a "Fuck You, Tao/Tao Lin Jealousy Poem"). I was prompted to read this book from a laudatory review in Poets and Writers of Englander's debut collection of short stories, More...

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Oct 19, 2007

Eric rated it:

Like Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," this is the tale of hard-boiled Jewish protagonist trying to make sense of a world that is rapidly deteriorating around him. But while Chabon went for affect and genre mimicry, Englander goes for a more soulful approach—the results are both more sober and more satisfying. Yet, Englander's book is far from perfect. There's not a whole lot going on during a long central act, and uninterrupted anguish can be as numbing as riveting. For a book More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 01, 2007

Michele rated it:

As I just finished this, it may take me a while to process my exact thoughts. There isn't a lot of florid description here of Argentina in the 70s or the Jewish community of Buenos Aires at that time, and yet the author still managed to make both these seem very present, despite never being wholly unveiled at any one point.

The protagonist is a pariah, neither at home in his community nor outside of it, and he is deeply troubled and morally defiant about it. A similar struggle marks t More...

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Jul 29, 2007

Wendy rated it:

I wanted to like this book more. Really. The setting of the book -- the "dirty war" in Argentina, when so many young people disappeared, seemed particularly interesting. But I found it a bit too heavy handed for me. The main character is engaged, for example, of erasing the sordid past of the Jewish communty (though it's a past that he, alone, seeks to remember). Plus his name, Kaddish, is the Jewish prayer for remembering the dead. Then his son is "disappeared" by the gover More...

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Aug 27, 2007

Jacquelyn rated it:

I didnt think I would like this book as much as I did--it got so much press before it came out that I thought it was too good to be true. But, it ended up being a really compelling story about a jewish family in Argentina during the dirty war. Their son gets "disappeared" and they have no one to turn to b/c of their status in society--b/c of their past even the jewish community wont help them. There is not a ton of dialogue, which really creates the mood that everything is being watch More...

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Oct 14, 2008

Blake rated it:

A pretty good book on an interesting topic (Argentina's "Dirty War") and one family's emotional journey through it, the author does a great job of developing the characters' emotional states while keeping the overall tone very light-hearted. But looking back, the primary action takes place in the last 1/3 of the book and I can't really remember much what took place leading up to that other than just broad development.

All in all a good read that turns great when the story fi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 10, 2011

Lizzy added it

This review was written by Judith Ruderman and posted by Lizzy Mottern

As the New Yorker observed in introducing its recent “20 under forty” series, “the fiction being written in this country today is not necessarily fiction set in this country.” A prime example of such fiction is The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander. To my mind it is among the best of American contemporary novels, and I nominated it for the summer reading project for the class of ‘15. The book takes pla More...

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Apr 10, 2011

Lane rated it:

Not an easy read because of the context (torture and disappearances in the aftermath of the Argentinan coupe in the 70's), but I was somewhat prepared as I had read his book of short stories, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" (which I highly recommend). After I finished the book I watched a few brief video interviews with the author, Nathan Englander, and one of his comments was that he needs to write a "pressurized novel." His apparent meaning is that, in this case, he More...

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Sep 13, 2009

jordan rated it:

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 re More...

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May 21, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

A RATHER grim sense of humour is one of the hallmarks of Jewish American
literature. Writers like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow made their names kvetching about the human condition, the shadow of the Holocaust in the not-so-ancient past informing the neuroses of their New World progeny.

In their footsteps comes Nathan Englander, born into an Orthodox Jewish family in upstate New York. He made a splash with his first book, a collection of short stories titled For The Relief Of Unbea More...

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Jan 16, 2011

Natalia Pì rated it:

I found this book very good, and very sad. Set in Buenos Ayres in the 1970's, it starts by telling us the everyday life of a Jewish family: mother, father and son, with all the everyday contrasts that are typical in a family with a young son who seems to be growing apart from his parents.
Then something happens, and through the story of this family, Englander tries to imagine how it must have been for people during the Argentinian dictatorship, what hopes and fears they felt in a time where More...

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Dec 06, 2010

Ann rated it:

A heartbreaking narrative that follows the nightmare world of a husband and wife who just lost their only son to Argentina's military junta. Thirty-thousand students disappeared in 1970's Brazil, you no one admitted it was happening. So Kaddish and Lillian work at cross purposes as they attempt to find out what happened. Lillian takes the accepted way of visiting jails and talking to bureaucrats who contend her son never existed. Kaddish turns to the underworld and hears horrible tales of studen More...

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Sep 10, 2009

Karen rated it:

Even though I did not love this book in the way I loved Nathan Englander's short story collection, I have to say that there were several things I really liked about this book. First of all, it was a topic that I am familiar with, even though reading non-fiction accounts of this period in Argentina's history has always been too much for me emotionally. I owe Mr. Englander respect for the fact that he got me to read a novel about this (and pretty quickly!) without once breaking down. In addition t More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Eight years ago Nathan Englander published his acclaimed short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. He brings the same historical profundity to his first novel. While focusing on the pessimistic Kaddish, whose name honors the dead, and his optimistic wife, Englander tells a much larger story about terrorist regimes and asks universal questions about remembering the dead, dealing with evil, and addressing assimilation, love, ritual, and generational gaps. Most reviewers praised t

More...

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Aug 28, 2011

Jane rated it:

My rating "didn't like it" doesn't mean I think this is not a well-written, perhaps even a brilliant, book. I just couldn't take it. The combination of Jewish humor/style and the horror of the Peron regime in Argentina was simply too much for me. The books is about a hundred kinds of disappearances. It begins with "disappearing" the names of the disreputable Jews in an Argentinian cemetery. This is Kaddish's job. He is a prostitute's son and works chipping away at the names More...

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Aug 06, 2011

Jayne rated it:

A profoundly depressing and harrowing story set in 1970s Argentina where people are disappearing, never to be seen again, and the authorities are denying that anything is wrong.

The novel follows Jewish couple Kaddish and Lillian as they search for their nineteen year old son, and as the months go by the desperation sets in. It is a stifling experience, page after page in their company as they head up blind alleys and come up against bureaucracy time and time again, but in terms of inv More...

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Jan 04, 2010

Fionnuala rated it:

A failure, but an interesting failure. Englander tries to pull off a tragicomedy about Argentina's Dirty War, and almost does it. Let down by a couple of overworked metaphors (the nose stuff gets a bit much), over-artsy descriptions (the falling general embodies every creative writing cliché) and some clunky authorial interventions (Englander doesn't need to tell us why he isn't revealing the content of the missing son's notes - the silence would have said so much more than his narratorial jus More...

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Dec 06, 2008

Becky rated it:

as a latin american studies major, i was particularly drawn to this novel about a jewish couple whose only child is "disappeared" during the argentine dirty war, but you really don't need any background in the subject matter to appreciate the story. the general plot is foreseeable, but the details are rich and unexpected, and englander has a really pretty writing style (although his dialogue is a bit unrealistic -- his characters talk just like the narrator). i was expecting this book More...

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Apr 03, 2011

Alison rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Aug 29, 2009

Corny rated it:

I probably did not appreciate this book in the fullest manner because I did not have a clear understanding of the background in Argentina during the 70s and 80s when the Junta took charge. Nevertheless, this extraordinary look at a couple facing the loss of its only son is universal in scope. Sometimes black, sometimes very touching, the narrative reveals the hopelessness of finding the "disappeared." The indomitable spirit of Lilian and the unending schemes of her husband Kaddish come More...

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Mar 05, 2009

Julie rated it:

This is a great book. Very powerful, more so than I expected it to be. It was interesting to read this one immediately after "Artificial Respiration," because Englander's novel is all about the story of one particular family (while Piglia's is much more theoretical and goes out of its way to deliberately not mention the specific political context, this book is *all* about the specifics, as horrifying as they may be). The first chapter was confusing (so much for the rave on the back cov More...

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Jan 08, 2009

Angel rated it:

Hated it!

I read half this novel and couldn't stand to read anymore. I premise is actually pretty interesting to me. It's about a Jewish family in Argentina in which the son is disappeared. it's a story of what happened in Argentina during that time but the "disappearing" also served as a symbol of how Jews have been treated in various places throughout history.

Still, I found the writing sloppy and unfocused and I didn't find the story compelling. I prefer subtlety i More...

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Dec 27, 2010

Ellen rated it:

Upon reflection, I decided this book deserves the fourth star. Yes, the story is very heavy, but the writing is so well done that credit has to be given where it is due.

This is a three and a half. On one hand, Nathan Englander writes beautifully. He has a gift of using a few words to sum up a character or a situation perfectly, and his writing has a lot of subtle humor in it. The problem is that the book is about a very painful subject--the thousands of people, primarily young More...

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Nov 13, 2008

Mindy rated it:

Fascinating piece of fiction about the Dirty War in Argentina. Descriptions of Buenos Aires incite wanderlust, despite the gritty subject matter. Also interesting historical novel about Jews in Argentina. Loved it.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Catherine added it

Very dark tale of the Dissappeared in Argentina's dirty war--the son who is spirited away is very much the youth who is clueless as to what is about to happen to him, his parents try to save him byt getting rid of the books that may put him at peril, but do not get rid of them all, and he is whisked away--one of them believes he is dead from the beginning and the other cannot let go of hope--so the dichotomy between which the story swings tells of the ends of the Bell curve. I had watched Imagi More...

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Mar 19, 2010

David rated it:

eBook- As soon as I finished this book I began to ask this question: How did a kid from New York write such a compelling story of Argentina and the 1970's/80's Dirty War? Ironically, I had also just finish a novel set in Argentina (it shall remain nameless and goodreads-less) by a young Seattle based author that was so horrible, and so offensive that I actually had to finish it just to see how badly an American could write about a foreign country.

Englander has written a tremendou More...

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Jun 22, 2011

Sarah rated it:

Englander's 10-year labor of love focuses on the Poznan family, Kaddish, Lillian, and son Pato, living in Buenos Aires in the late 70s at the height of civil unrest. After the insurgent coup, Pato is disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War, and the novel follows what happens to Kaddish and Lillian as they alternately cling to and push each other away in the hunt to find their son. The fictionalized circumstances are based on real-life events that even Orwell would grapple with, and Englander's More...

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