The Ministry of Special Cases
by Nathan Englander
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 707)
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
Readers who enjoy history / Jewish themes / character development
While exploring a tumultuous time in Argentinean history through the eyes of comic characters, Nathan Englander’s new novel The Ministry of Special Cases (Knopf, 2007) muses on the lengths to which loving parents will go when their child is in danger, and the lengths to which a repressive government will go to quell dissention.
The novel takes place in Buenos Aires in 1976, when the troubled government of Isabel Peron was overthrown by a military junta. It was a time of extreme violence an...more
The novel takes place in Buenos Aires in 1976, when the troubled government of Isabel Peron was overthrown by a military junta. It was a time of extreme violence an...more
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Read in June, 2008
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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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
Everyone
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Read in September, 2007
First off, definitely very readable. And worth reading.
(I read a lot of books like this (ie, stories of life under dictatorships) in my early college years just before going to Chile. Of these, I would most recommend Garcia Marquez' Clandestine in Chile, which is more a nonfiction thriller. I'd also recommend, perhaps, Feast of the Goat, by Vargas Llosa, a historical fiction about the Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic, which is well read in tandem with Julia Alvarez' In the Time o...more
(I read a lot of books like this (ie, stories of life under dictatorships) in my early college years just before going to Chile. Of these, I would most recommend Garcia Marquez' Clandestine in Chile, which is more a nonfiction thriller. I'd also recommend, perhaps, Feast of the Goat, by Vargas Llosa, a historical fiction about the Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic, which is well read in tandem with Julia Alvarez' In the Time o...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
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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 the more ...more
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 the more ...more
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Read in October, 2007
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 bo...more
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Read in August, 2007
this is one of those books that, if someone tried to explain what it was about, you'd probably think, 'hmm, sounds ok, i guess', and you might not read it, and you'd miss out on one of the finest novels of the last five years.
englander weaves together many themes in this funny, clever, sad, and compelling tale of a 1970's jewish argentinian family. it deals with terror, generational gaps, shame, pride, and ultimately, absence and grief.
if you have read englander's brilliant short stor...more
englander weaves together many themes in this funny, clever, sad, and compelling tale of a 1970's jewish argentinian family. it deals with terror, generational gaps, shame, pride, and ultimately, absence and grief.
if you have read englander's brilliant short stor...more
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Read in August, 2007
This book doesn't really deserve to be on the "Eh,fine" shelf, b/c it was pretty good and interesting and smoothly written, but I was sort of disappointed by what Englander left out.
The book is about being Jewish in Argentina in the 70s, when, basically, Argentina was corrupted to the point of crumbling and was easily mistakable for hell. Especially for Jewish people, evidently. If that seems like a really vague description, it is.... I feel like ENglander did research and is inter...more
The book is about being Jewish in Argentina in the 70s, when, basically, Argentina was corrupted to the point of crumbling and was easily mistakable for hell. Especially for Jewish people, evidently. If that seems like a really vague description, it is.... I feel like ENglander did research and is inter...more
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Read in May, 2008
A heartbreaking dissent into the world of a wife and husband who lose their only child to Argintina's military junta during the 1970s. The most difficult part of this book is the way in which you watch the family fall apart, from the relatively sane, if unusual, "normal" life to an insane world in which people wait endlessly by windows, give away their life savings on a vague possibility, threaten government leaders and grow apart in the absence of the child that held them together.
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Read in November, 2007
This book was a bit disappointing. I read Nathan Englander's short stories several years ago and some of them were so good I can still remember pieces of them. This one is his first novel, and it didn't have the same impact as the short stories.
Nonetheless it raised some interesting ideas. What I liked was the question of truth. For the father of the missing child, the truth was that the son was dead and it was a travesty not to mourn properly and put him soundly into his grave. For the...more
Nonetheless it raised some interesting ideas. What I liked was the question of truth. For the father of the missing child, the truth was that the son was dead and it was a travesty not to mourn properly and put him soundly into his grave. For the...more
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Read in May, 2007
Let me start off by acknowledging that the book deals with subject matter which deserves special reverence (Argentina’s Dirty War) and also acknowledge that the story itself is well conceptualized. However, it is not the book that is advertised in its liner-note, to wit, – a book which balances joyfulness and despair, a celebration of our humanity, in all its weakness and hope. It was – for this reader - an unrelentingly cheerless work, a despairing story of things falling apart. As far a...more
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Read in June, 2008
Set in Argentina during a time when an authoritarian government has imposed a rule of fear, paranoia, and ruthless bureaucracy, The Ministry of Special Cases centers on a single family's struggles with power and authority. Despite the comedy inherent in some of the interactions with the various bureaucrats -- kind of like Terry Gilliam's Brazil -- this is not a happy book and even the humor quickly gives way to darkness. Such a government has been well described before, but Englander does, for t...more
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Read in July, 2007
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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Read in July, 2007
I preferred his first book of short stories, "For the relief of unbearable urges," to this full-length novel. This book is about an Argentinean Jewish family during the 1970s, when there were lots of people who were "disappeared."
The main family lives in somewhat of a state of disgrace within the Jewish community as the father's job is to alter gravestones to remove a connection with a sordid part of a family's past. One day, their son gets disappeared, and the rest of...more
The main family lives in somewhat of a state of disgrace within the Jewish community as the father's job is to alter gravestones to remove a connection with a sordid part of a family's past. One day, their son gets disappeared, and the rest of...more
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Read in February, 2008
Recently I have gotten into learning history all over again. I know there are many details always left out in school about history and this book was one of those historical fiction titles that touches on the "Dirty War" that occurred in the late 70s in Argentina. I got more involved with the characters than I expected and that has been happening to me a lot lately. It happened in "Pillars of the Earth" (which I highly recommend as well. Oprah caught on late). I don't want to ...more
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Read in July, 2007
In turn, humorous and horrifying, the new Nathan Englander novel, The Ministry Of Special Cases, revisits the events of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and it's impact on the Jewish community.
Lillian and Kaddish and their son, Pato are living ordinary lives, deliberately separated from their Jewish roots. When Pato disappears, the two parents embark on a labyrinth journey that twists and turns through various governmental agencies and eventually leads them to the Ministry of Special Cases. At ...more
Lillian and Kaddish and their son, Pato are living ordinary lives, deliberately separated from their Jewish roots. When Pato disappears, the two parents embark on a labyrinth journey that twists and turns through various governmental agencies and eventually leads them to the Ministry of Special Cases. At ...more
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Read in February, 2008
What can you say about this - death of a salesman, except with jews in fascist argentina? And without even a wife who believes in the protagonist?
Just about as uplifting as it sounds, and suffers from overly-precious dialogue to boot. It is a page-turner, though, even as one is aware (as with most books about fascism) that the turning pages are bringing one no closer to an actual conclusion, and all that there is likely to be is more grinding, on top of more grinding.
Sadder f...more
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This novel, about a Jewish family in Argentina during all the crappy political unrest of the 1970s, has been garnering a ton of rave reviews. I was all excited to read it . . . and then I couldn't get into it at all. Seriously, it starts all in media res going on about Jewish cemetaries and things. It did pick up after that, but just as I'd get into it, it would start to drag again. And we're talking about a story involving the disappeared! But the problem is, there's so much bureaucracy and cor...more
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Read in November, 2007
I prefer Englander's short stories. This is a perfectly well written novel, but it does feel a bit heavy handed at times. The erasure of names, the erasure of Jewishness, the erasure of a person, the relation between these these are hammered home with little finesse. Stylistically, I found something wanting, though that is probably a matter of taste. Fianlly, I also felt the book lacked a real sense of place. The story, sadly, could have occurred in so many places throughout the 20th centur...more
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Read in April, 2008
This is a really good book but half way through it I started to slow down my reading pace...I guess I became less enthralled and the plot slowed as the nightmare began...then I started to read it before bed and yep, it helped me to fall asleep even though I was interested in the plight of the characters, the history, etc. Its a sad book...not much hope (or maybe too much hope??) or redemption...some tragedies, we just don't endure. I also felt with this one that I was never quite fully in Kaddi...more
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