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For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Nathan Englander's first work of fiction, published when he was in his late twenties, landed him firmly in the company of Bellow, Malamud, Singer and Roth, with ten delightfully irreverent stories rooted in the weight of Jewish history and the customs of orthodox life. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is bold, funny and irresistibly inventive, a brilliant tragi-comic vision delivered in a voice that is as humorous and full of life as it is sorrowful and haunted - a work of stunning authority and imagination.
In 'The Twenty-Seventh Man' a clerical error brings earnest, unpublished Pinchas into the company of writers slated for execution at the order of Stalin; in 'The Tumblers' a group of Jews fated for Auschwitz improvise an escape by blending into a troop of acrobats and teaching themselves to tumble; in the title story, a married Hasidic man incensed by his wife's interminable menstrual cycle gets a dispensation from a rabbi to see a prostitute, 'for the reliefof unbearable urges'. Englander's stories are wise and compassionate, at once outrageous and wrenchingly sad.
In 'The Twenty-Seventh Man' a clerical error brings earnest, unpublished Pinchas into the company of writers slated for execution at the order of Stalin; in 'The Tumblers' a group of Jews fated for Auschwitz improvise an escape by blending into a troop of acrobats and teaching themselves to tumble; in the title story, a married Hasidic man incensed by his wife's interminable menstrual cycle gets a dispensation from a rabbi to see a prostitute, 'for the reliefof unbearable urges'. Englander's stories are wise and compassionate, at once outrageous and wrenchingly sad.
224 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Nathan Englander
47 books407 followersNathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999. The volume won widespread critical acclaim, earning Englander the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kauffman Prize, and established him as an important writer of fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 318 reviews
January 28, 2018
A mixed bag. The first two stories are full of black absurd humor. The other stories often start out interesting but then lose pace. The best one for me was Reunion.
July 22, 2016
A solid inaugural book of short stories, all pieces written with Jewish orthodoxy as the centerpiece. I really like how Englander approached this subject matter from so many different angles; using horror and humor to bring home a point. The author isn't just taking the piss on his heritage, he's pointing his quill at all of humanity. "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" was a standout in the collection; the writing here was especially crisp and the four very distinct charcters in the story have their own voices portrayed beautifully.
April 30, 2018
che bella l'ebreitudine come te la racconta englander, quasi quasi mi viene voglia di convertirmi, mettermi una sheitel e andare a finire i miei giorni a mea shearim.
October 8, 2013
Meeting a new author via short stories isn't ideal for me. So on reading the first two in this collection I thought I was in for a slog. First, a group martyred by Stalin, and second, one martyred by Nazis. Terrible--but I didn't know them well enough to feel it in my bones. On the other hand maybe I hadn't warmed sufficiently to the author to let him make me feel. The next story is about this charming but shallow manic-depressive screw-up who's always complaining it isn't his fault: things are looking up with that story, but I thought it still ended with a thud. Next comes a sex-starved, neglected, middle-aged, and very Orthodox mother of six. Shorn at marriage, her life force seemingly went the way of the hair and she's obsessed with getting it back. Luckily, so it would seem, she's the wig maker and an artist at it.... The author is starting to show me he can mine the particular so deeply he hits the universal. My favorite: the story about the man who out of the blue has a conversion experience one day in the back seat of a cab. It's so funny and poignant it hurts (and in that regard I think he outdoes Howard Jacobson's wannabe Jew Julian Treslove from The Finkler Question). The next story is named "Reb Kringle"--obvious, or it will be before you can get very far over the mountain and through the woods. Maybe the subject of that one is already a cultural archetype. Or could I have read it somewhere else? ...Next, a really, really sad one: chained wife, trapped in Jewish marriage because her husband won't give her her religious writ of divorce although he's been gone for years, now driven to extreme measures by this travesty--until you see, with a shock of recognition, that she would be just as out-maneuvered and paralyzed, whatever the particular policies and procedures. Ouch. ...The title story perhaps is another cultural archetype, but the protagonist is a real character in his own right. You want to tell him to get himself to the doctor and let go of that guilt!
The book ends with a possibly autobiographical story of a young American Jew in Jerusalem during a second-intifada act of terror. Anyway, the dates are right. It's more modern and "realistic" than the other stories.
Terror messes with your head, even if you know you're still more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than by a terrorist bomb. The cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book on how such deviations from rationality work, talked about how he knew the statistics but couldn't bring himself to ride a bus during the intifada and could hardly stand to pull up alongside one at a traffic light.
I had read that last story the previous night and had it on my mind when I saw the story of the latest Iraq bomb blast. I've read that, throughout history, war has been the norm, with peace a rare interlude existing only at specific times or in unusual circumstances. If we have it, though, we get used to it and hardly appreciate it.
Anyway, in this book you'll meet up with a collection of bizarre characters who are shockingly real and march to the beat of their idiosyncrasies. For me the stories built in power, up to my favorite, in the middle of the book, and from there to the end was easy and quick because I liked it.
Most of the stories apart from the first two and the last are about being stuck in relationships. And the author paints them as very, very sticky.
My beef with contemporary short stories as I've encountered them is their bleakness. I prefer a momentary ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloom; not necessarily a "happy ending," but just the hint of a promise that peace and happiness exist; that, in deepest winter, spring will come again. Thus my choice of favorite.
The book ends with a possibly autobiographical story of a young American Jew in Jerusalem during a second-intifada act of terror. Anyway, the dates are right. It's more modern and "realistic" than the other stories.
Terror messes with your head, even if you know you're still more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than by a terrorist bomb. The cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book on how such deviations from rationality work, talked about how he knew the statistics but couldn't bring himself to ride a bus during the intifada and could hardly stand to pull up alongside one at a traffic light.
I had read that last story the previous night and had it on my mind when I saw the story of the latest Iraq bomb blast. I've read that, throughout history, war has been the norm, with peace a rare interlude existing only at specific times or in unusual circumstances. If we have it, though, we get used to it and hardly appreciate it.
Anyway, in this book you'll meet up with a collection of bizarre characters who are shockingly real and march to the beat of their idiosyncrasies. For me the stories built in power, up to my favorite, in the middle of the book, and from there to the end was easy and quick because I liked it.
Most of the stories apart from the first two and the last are about being stuck in relationships. And the author paints them as very, very sticky.
My beef with contemporary short stories as I've encountered them is their bleakness. I prefer a momentary ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloom; not necessarily a "happy ending," but just the hint of a promise that peace and happiness exist; that, in deepest winter, spring will come again. Thus my choice of favorite.
January 27, 2018
3.5 stars - A well written selection of dark and sometimes funny stories mostly revolving around Orthodox Jewish culture. Englander has created an imaginative and fascinating collection of characters. Yet they remained "characters" - and did not come alive for me. I really liked Englander's Ministry of Special Cases and will certainly read more of his work.
August 27, 2010
The stories here aren't character driven as much as they are idea driven. Some of the ideas are brilliant. The setting is always deeply Jewish, but I think those who don't have an understanding of Orthodox Jewish culture can still strongly identify with the lives of the people portrayed. Englander owes a deep debt to Bernard Malamud in a good way. He may well be his worthy successor.
These stories often begin with a bang. Englander doesn't waste time on setting. Some of these stories had me smiling with admiration right from the first paragraph. For example, who would possibly think of taking the stories and characters of Chelm folklore and updating them to the Holocaust where, in some strange way, the Chelmites manage to survive because of their foolishness? That's just stupendous and wonderful.
The execution of these stories is very good with unique details added to amuse and keep reader interest. Englander is not afraid to use shtick even in the most serious of settings. In this work, his voice isn't quite mature, and the narratives often wobble a bit. The language isn't quite as sharp as it could be. But Englander is clearly a talent even in this first work of fiction. His subsequent novel, The Minister of Special Cases, showed that he was capable of building on the talents developed here. Englander is one of my favorite young novelists writing today.
These stories often begin with a bang. Englander doesn't waste time on setting. Some of these stories had me smiling with admiration right from the first paragraph. For example, who would possibly think of taking the stories and characters of Chelm folklore and updating them to the Holocaust where, in some strange way, the Chelmites manage to survive because of their foolishness? That's just stupendous and wonderful.
The execution of these stories is very good with unique details added to amuse and keep reader interest. Englander is not afraid to use shtick even in the most serious of settings. In this work, his voice isn't quite mature, and the narratives often wobble a bit. The language isn't quite as sharp as it could be. But Englander is clearly a talent even in this first work of fiction. His subsequent novel, The Minister of Special Cases, showed that he was capable of building on the talents developed here. Englander is one of my favorite young novelists writing today.
July 18, 2012
This guy's first book? Damn, I'm jealous. If you only read two of these stories, I recommend "The Twenty-seventh Man" and "The Tumblers." These stories are remarkable for their historical sense of authenticity. I believe in the characters Bretzky and Zunser and Korinsky, and I am fully in emotional harmony with the idiot savant Pelovitz. Englander said of this story that the rounding up of 26 Yiddish authors did occur and he has take the liberty to bring this tale to life and add in Pelovitz to boot. There is an aura of historical realness to the story that made me look up the authors to see if they in fact did exist--that's how convincing Englander is. Ultmately, I marvel at an author so young who can write so old. The book is an artifact of a wise, weathered soul that flowed through a young man's pen.
December 6, 2017
Onvan : For the Relief of Unbearable Urges - Nevisande : Nathan Englander - ISBN : 375704434 - ISBN13 : 9780375704437 - Dar 205 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 1999
May 15, 2014
Nathan Englander publishes only a couple of story collections per decade. The fact that he is an international darling of Jewish literature suggests that his work makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. And there is indeed a richness and complexity to these stories that bears out the time and labor Englander apparently put into them. Even the order of the pieces throughout the collection suggests careful deliberation, with significant themes and motifs carrying through from one story to the next. The first pair of tales—“The Twenty-Seventh Man” and “The Tumblers”—share a fabulist sensibility: they both investigate the suffering of Jews under oppressive state governments, chronicling their doomed attempts to survive in language that is at once sweet and hopeful and graphically violent.
An account of the aftermath of terrorism, “In This Way We are Wise,” ends the collection. It is the most fragmented story. It is also digressive, distracted, difficult to follow—a persuasive mimic of the mind recovering from tragedy. Or steeling itself for the beginning of recovery. It leaves the images of attack lingering in readers’ minds, sprinkled throughout the narrative of an otherwise normal day in the life of an American expatriate in Jerusalem. He goes to his usual café, orders his usual coffee, goes home to watch the news and then make love with his girlfriend. Then it’s back to the café, all the while wondering what responsibilities he bears to the dead, or more alarmingly, to the living.
“For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” reads like a retelling of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” its cruel irony focused on a Hasidic Jew whose wife ignores him while his desire for her swells hour by hour. When he seeks help from his rabbi, the solution he is given turns out to solve all of his love life’s problems with the same act that threatens to destroy his love life for good.
“The Last One Way” features another character trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, this time a woman in her fifties trying for the past eighteen years to divorce her abusive husband, who will not give her the permission to sever their marriage that their religion requires. She begs. She turns to kabbala and numerology, makes promises, eventually turns to hired thugs. The story renders an elegant, sympathetic account of her struggle. I liked this one a lot—it was more grounded than some of the stories in this collection’s flashier, more gimmicky middle.
In particular, the middle contains two stories—“Reb Kringle,” about a Jewish man playing Santa Clause at the local department store, and “The Gilgul of Park Avenue,” about a wealthy Manhattanite who suddenly realizes in the back of a taxi cab that he is Jewish—stories that sparkle with wit even as they stretch plausibility. They feel like departures from two earlier pieces in the collection—“Reunion” and “The Wig”—both of which investigate desperate psyches on the verge of mental breakdown, trying to fulfill their deepest desire, for which they and the ones close to them endure the cost. In these stories, Englander portrays the pain we suffer at the hands of those close to us, the pain we cause by accident because we cannot help ourselves or erase what our hearts want.
This is a collection of sophisticated, complex stories that reward the study and analysis. Those interested in Jewish culture should especially make a point of picking up this book, but the themes--as with all good literature--are virtually universal.
An account of the aftermath of terrorism, “In This Way We are Wise,” ends the collection. It is the most fragmented story. It is also digressive, distracted, difficult to follow—a persuasive mimic of the mind recovering from tragedy. Or steeling itself for the beginning of recovery. It leaves the images of attack lingering in readers’ minds, sprinkled throughout the narrative of an otherwise normal day in the life of an American expatriate in Jerusalem. He goes to his usual café, orders his usual coffee, goes home to watch the news and then make love with his girlfriend. Then it’s back to the café, all the while wondering what responsibilities he bears to the dead, or more alarmingly, to the living.
“For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” reads like a retelling of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” its cruel irony focused on a Hasidic Jew whose wife ignores him while his desire for her swells hour by hour. When he seeks help from his rabbi, the solution he is given turns out to solve all of his love life’s problems with the same act that threatens to destroy his love life for good.
“The Last One Way” features another character trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, this time a woman in her fifties trying for the past eighteen years to divorce her abusive husband, who will not give her the permission to sever their marriage that their religion requires. She begs. She turns to kabbala and numerology, makes promises, eventually turns to hired thugs. The story renders an elegant, sympathetic account of her struggle. I liked this one a lot—it was more grounded than some of the stories in this collection’s flashier, more gimmicky middle.
In particular, the middle contains two stories—“Reb Kringle,” about a Jewish man playing Santa Clause at the local department store, and “The Gilgul of Park Avenue,” about a wealthy Manhattanite who suddenly realizes in the back of a taxi cab that he is Jewish—stories that sparkle with wit even as they stretch plausibility. They feel like departures from two earlier pieces in the collection—“Reunion” and “The Wig”—both of which investigate desperate psyches on the verge of mental breakdown, trying to fulfill their deepest desire, for which they and the ones close to them endure the cost. In these stories, Englander portrays the pain we suffer at the hands of those close to us, the pain we cause by accident because we cannot help ourselves or erase what our hearts want.
This is a collection of sophisticated, complex stories that reward the study and analysis. Those interested in Jewish culture should especially make a point of picking up this book, but the themes--as with all good literature--are virtually universal.
July 14, 2013
There is no question that this author can write. Maybe I was a bit handicapped because I know and understand even less about the orthodox Jews. The first two stories were a bit dark but humorous at the same time, as if the author knows you can only have so much darkness before light. The rest of the books and the stories were a little easier, I particularly liked the story, "The Wig".
May 2, 2025
Het gebeurt maar zelden dat ik de verhalen uit een verhalenbundel achter elkaar uitlees. Meestal lees ik één enkel verhaal tussen twee romans in, hooguit twee of drie. Maar Nathan Englander verleidde me om in zijn even geestige als melancholische joodse universum te blijven. In sommige verhalen toont Englander zijn virtuoze meesterschap in optima forma, die behoren tot de beste verhalen die ik ooit las. Weer andere vind ik net iets te kolderiek. Je moet nog wel bij kunnen blijven als lezer — alleen die bescheiden smetjes weerhouden me ervan om vijf sterren te geven. Maar perfectie is nooit ver weg in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
February 6, 2017
strong stories with Jewishness as their theme. The first one has a bunch of writers rounded up and jailed in Stalin's Russia, and in the second a group of Jews in WW2 Germany somehow board the wrong train (they are supposed to be heading off to the death camps) and are mistaken for tumblers. Humour offsets the impending horror and allows you (the reader) to breathe and think, thus underlining the grim realities to come. Others stories are more contemporary, one set in a terrorised Jerusalem where people run from suicide bombs, another In New York where a gentile suddenly realises he is Jewish at heart in a cab. All are witty, original and elegantly written, although I found some more successful than others. A terrific debut.
September 13, 2007
OK I'll say it: you've GOT to read this. But let me qualify that by mentioning that you might not get it if you're not (sigh) Jewish. I think it was Will Smith who said, "Take it from me, gentiles just don't understand." In spite of the Semitic tag, Nathan Englander is as good a young writer as any I can think of. I hope his debut novel which just came out is as good as this. Tremendous short fiction.
November 6, 2007
This collection of short stories gives a peek into the world of the Hasadim, a group that never fails to fascinate me. It is for the most part arranged chronologically, from the Stalinist purges of Yiddish authors to what seems to be an autobiographical account of surviving a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Beautifully written and sometimes really devastating.
July 17, 2011
Disappointing
May 30, 2014
Another splendid collection of Short stories, reading these is like taking a heavenly bath in great writing.
April 19, 2018
The story from this collection that stands out is The Tumblers. How a writer can zip back and forth from imminent cataclysm to absurd farce is nothing short of amazing. Who knew that the chasm between Jews who brush off religious rituals and those who live by them could be so entertaining? Nathan Englander knows the Jewish people intimately; their ancient history, their tragedy, and their human foibles.
March 14, 2021
A terrific collection of short stories
December 26, 2025
A really fascinating collection of stories circling Judaism. Doesn’t feel repetitive at any point and, ultimately, challenges the reader. Dense in that good contemporary way.
February 18, 2020
Really enjoyable. As with any collection, some were much stronger than others. Englander is has carved out a niche for himself as a modern Jewish storyteller and I’m here for it.
October 6, 2023
Meaningful short stories. Great read.
June 30, 2017
This book was beautiful. Must. Read. More. Englander.
February 2, 2017
Somehow I did not realize this was a collection of short stories and I wasn't really in the mood. They are not bad stories, but are all focused on Orthodox Jews (something about which I don't know a whole lot). It holds together well enough as a collection and some are better than others; I have each story noted below.
The Twenty-seventh Man
A story about 27 men in holding before execution in Stalin Russia. The focus is on the last man added to the list (the 27th) as an almost after thought. He seems to be less productive, but certainly worshipful of the other 26 more famous men. I wasn't really taken with this one; just as Pinchas gets acclaim he is shot. On the other hand, it was illustrative of the brutality of war and persecution of the Jews.
The Tumblers
This one was a bit more hopeful. The most strict orthodox Jews mistakenly board a circus train (instead of a train on its way to a camp). It left me wondering how the very efficient German guards would have allowed this to happen. The irony here is that of course they don't pull off a tumbling act (the reader does not expect that), but they are greeted as a clown troupe performing the "Jewish ballet". It is unclear from the ending if they will continue performing or be sent to the camps, but it is a bit hopeful.
Reunion
This is set in modern times with a non-confirming man who is repeatedly put into an asylum by his wife. While there, he meets a man who turns out to be his rabbi's brother. Clearly the shock value of a reunion will not appeal and once again Marty learns that conformity is NOT about impulse. I was mildly entertained with this one, but also struck by the inability of the rabbi to forgive.
The Wig
Again set in modern times, the wigmaker becomes obsessed with a gardener's hair. I was unsure about the ending. She gave him an envelope filled with (what this reader believes to be) $4000, yet at the end he is hounding her for money. I guess the point is that the hair was worth more than that, but can't the guy grow more? I was not convinced that he would continue to hound her; it would have been more believable if he started bringing around his friends to try to sell her more hair (since she paid such top dollar).
The Gilgul of Park Avenue
This was similar to Reunion in that the conflict is between the husband and wife and shrinks are consulted. Both stories deal with expectations; as spouses we have certain parameters in which we are supposed to behave. When a spouse stops following orthodox behavior (in Reunion) or starts (in Gilgul), the other spouse has the right to be upset. Gilgul is a bit more hopeful and certainly allows for individuals to be such within certain bounds. There were also a few funny moments along the way.
Reb Kringle
I think this way my favorite story. An orthodox Jew working as Santa and getting fired. Interesting to watch the intersection of need (must earn money in a job) with values (a kid shouldn't be denied Hanukkah).
The Last One Way
Again we have the power of the community upon the individual. Poor Gitta has been trying to get divorced for 18 years, but cannot move on. Unfortunately I just didn't get it. Threatening murder and beating up her ex-husband and pretending to be pregnant. It felt like a farce, but I was afraid that Englander meant it with a straight face. This was probably my least favorite of the stories.
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
This was also greatly ironically funny. The needy husband is advised to visit a prostitute in order to calm himself enough to be aloof, which will then entice his wife. It works, perfectly. But, of course the husband is not only guilty and feels badly then when his wife makes advances, he also has contracted a disease. Definitely my second favorite in the book.
In this way We are Wise
The short sections with poetic descriptions were pretty, but I didn't feel like this one belonged with the others. An American living in Isreal and coming to grips with the war zone. There was not a humorous element and it did not focus on orthodoxy. In general, I thought this was one of the weaker stories in the collection.
The Twenty-seventh Man
A story about 27 men in holding before execution in Stalin Russia. The focus is on the last man added to the list (the 27th) as an almost after thought. He seems to be less productive, but certainly worshipful of the other 26 more famous men. I wasn't really taken with this one; just as Pinchas gets acclaim he is shot. On the other hand, it was illustrative of the brutality of war and persecution of the Jews.
The Tumblers
This one was a bit more hopeful. The most strict orthodox Jews mistakenly board a circus train (instead of a train on its way to a camp). It left me wondering how the very efficient German guards would have allowed this to happen. The irony here is that of course they don't pull off a tumbling act (the reader does not expect that), but they are greeted as a clown troupe performing the "Jewish ballet". It is unclear from the ending if they will continue performing or be sent to the camps, but it is a bit hopeful.
Reunion
This is set in modern times with a non-confirming man who is repeatedly put into an asylum by his wife. While there, he meets a man who turns out to be his rabbi's brother. Clearly the shock value of a reunion will not appeal and once again Marty learns that conformity is NOT about impulse. I was mildly entertained with this one, but also struck by the inability of the rabbi to forgive.
The Wig
Again set in modern times, the wigmaker becomes obsessed with a gardener's hair. I was unsure about the ending. She gave him an envelope filled with (what this reader believes to be) $4000, yet at the end he is hounding her for money. I guess the point is that the hair was worth more than that, but can't the guy grow more? I was not convinced that he would continue to hound her; it would have been more believable if he started bringing around his friends to try to sell her more hair (since she paid such top dollar).
The Gilgul of Park Avenue
This was similar to Reunion in that the conflict is between the husband and wife and shrinks are consulted. Both stories deal with expectations; as spouses we have certain parameters in which we are supposed to behave. When a spouse stops following orthodox behavior (in Reunion) or starts (in Gilgul), the other spouse has the right to be upset. Gilgul is a bit more hopeful and certainly allows for individuals to be such within certain bounds. There were also a few funny moments along the way.
Reb Kringle
I think this way my favorite story. An orthodox Jew working as Santa and getting fired. Interesting to watch the intersection of need (must earn money in a job) with values (a kid shouldn't be denied Hanukkah).
The Last One Way
Again we have the power of the community upon the individual. Poor Gitta has been trying to get divorced for 18 years, but cannot move on. Unfortunately I just didn't get it. Threatening murder and beating up her ex-husband and pretending to be pregnant. It felt like a farce, but I was afraid that Englander meant it with a straight face. This was probably my least favorite of the stories.
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
This was also greatly ironically funny. The needy husband is advised to visit a prostitute in order to calm himself enough to be aloof, which will then entice his wife. It works, perfectly. But, of course the husband is not only guilty and feels badly then when his wife makes advances, he also has contracted a disease. Definitely my second favorite in the book.
In this way We are Wise
The short sections with poetic descriptions were pretty, but I didn't feel like this one belonged with the others. An American living in Isreal and coming to grips with the war zone. There was not a humorous element and it did not focus on orthodoxy. In general, I thought this was one of the weaker stories in the collection.
April 27, 2025
Some good, some bad. I really liked “Reunion”, felt it was written with great clarity and intensity. The unfolding of the story and the narrators’ own “narrative” was really well done. And even though the other characters only really appear in the last few pages, their presence in the rest of the story is real enough that they seem like real people well before you actually meet them. That’s a lot to get done in less than 30 pages.
Other stories were good, but not amazing. The two that I enjoyed were “the 27th man” and the titular entry. Interesting, engaging, but not quite all there. Don’t know why… just felt that they lacked a kind of humanity maybe. Both felt more like a version of a story someone had heard and was trying to recreate, rather than a piece with some personal investment in it.
The remaining stories were either unremarkable or unrewarding. Found “the Gilgul of park avenue” particularly frustrating. The main thrust— man suddenly realises he is Jewish in a cab, despite having not a drop of Jewish blood in him, and reorganises his life accordingly— was actually really interesting, and I liked how the author treated it as something both humorous and sincere. But the tension in the story felt completely unbelievable. WHY does Sue treat Charles with such venom and hostility? Couldn’t tell you! She isn’t given enough of a personality to make her rage feel like a coherent part of the narrative. Feels like something that’s just been slapped on to make the story more interesting—unnecessary, I think, since the absurdity of the original set-up can do quite a bit of heavy lifting on its own.
Other stories were good, but not amazing. The two that I enjoyed were “the 27th man” and the titular entry. Interesting, engaging, but not quite all there. Don’t know why… just felt that they lacked a kind of humanity maybe. Both felt more like a version of a story someone had heard and was trying to recreate, rather than a piece with some personal investment in it.
The remaining stories were either unremarkable or unrewarding. Found “the Gilgul of park avenue” particularly frustrating. The main thrust— man suddenly realises he is Jewish in a cab, despite having not a drop of Jewish blood in him, and reorganises his life accordingly— was actually really interesting, and I liked how the author treated it as something both humorous and sincere. But the tension in the story felt completely unbelievable. WHY does Sue treat Charles with such venom and hostility? Couldn’t tell you! She isn’t given enough of a personality to make her rage feel like a coherent part of the narrative. Feels like something that’s just been slapped on to make the story more interesting—unnecessary, I think, since the absurdity of the original set-up can do quite a bit of heavy lifting on its own.
December 22, 2025
The formidable Free Fruit for Young Widows by Nathan Englander…the first lines can be read at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
10 out of 10
There is a sense of déjà vu when reading about some of what happens in this remarkable, tragic short story, but it could well be that it has such a power to penetrate and shake you that you may feel it has been there for quite some time…there may be another explanation, that the most repugnant things that humans do are similar, contrary to what the first sentence of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina says: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” and the awful sounds familiar…
In the first few lines something quite terrible happens, though there is the familiar now – since this is the last story in the What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank collection – humor, satire that Nathan Englander uses…the incident happens during the short war that followed the nationalization of the Suez Canal, under the brazen, reckless leadership of a nationalist – one that announces the age of Trump, Le Pen, BolsaNero and the rest of the Wild Bunch – when France fought along with Britain and Israel, until the Americans said stop…incidentally, it could be an interesting thought experiment to try and put into perspective the incredible closeness between the US and Israel that is so clear today and imagine what the situation might have been with the attitudes of the present…
There would first be America plunging in to fight together with Israel, maybe a reluctant Britain deciding to join forces, but it is not an established fact, while France would most likely stay away…we have after all the precedent where Jacques Chirac has said no to the USA demand to fight in the Middle East and then the republicans mainly – those who are now led by fools, committed to the cult of Trump, the Big Lie, stupid, false claims that the elections have stolen…and then when you have no reliable elections, and they are ‘a massive fraud’, you are left with a tyranny, it is the end of democracy – decided to boycott the French and stop eating French fries…well, eat them, but use a different name…
‘During the 1956 Sinai Campaign there were soldiers in the Israeli Army and soldiers in the Egyptian Army who ended up wearing identical French-supplied uniforms to battle…Not long into the fighting, an Israeli platoon came to rest at a captured Egyptian camp to the east of Bir Gafgafa, in the Sinai Desert…There Private Shimmy Gezer (formerly Shimon Bibberblat, of Warsaw, Poland) sat down to eat at a makeshift outdoor mess…Four armed commandos sat down with him…He grunted…They grunted…Shimmy dug into his lunch…’
And then Shimmy’s comrade, Tendler – the one who would become a professor of philosophy – shoots all the four commandos in the head and they all die almost instantly, to the horror of the private, who protests and is aghast at what has just happened and attacks the killer over this useless murder…
It has to do with the uniforms mentioned, they looked like they belonged to the same army, but they were the enemy…still, you should not shoot them like that, they were just about to sit down and eat and you could and should have taken them prisoners…it something along these lines, but the effect is that Tendler is infuriated and when Shimmy does not stop, he jumps on him and fights the man with fury…
Years later, Shimmy Gezer will show his son, Etgar, the scars and the damage left on his check by this vicious attack, for Tendler was not satisfied with just a pummeling, he took vengeance with application…in spite of this serious event, for years later, indeed, to the end of his life and then after that, his son will continue with the habit, Shimmy will give free fruit to the professor that had abused him during one of the many wars he had fought in, just like he gives Free Fruit for the Young Widows and tells them they sacrificed, we sacrifice, what is a bag of apples…nothing, only for the professor it is hard to see why…
When challenged by Etgar, after his bar mitzvah, at thirteen, once he will have become a man, his father tells him that many have died in World War II, more than six million Jews, while Tendler has survived, but somehow only in body, otherwise they have killed him we are to understand…then the gruesome, tragic, terrible narrative of what had happened to the professor is told, his interment in the concentration camps, where all of his family has been killed, mother and father shot in front of him and all his other relatives…
The way he escapes is also horrible, in that some of those working with the dead bodies try to get some leeway for the jobs they do and allow the poor boy to hide in the mountain of corpses that is piling high…they come with more dead Jews and they let him get out and then find some space again between the decomposing corpses, where ultimately a couple of allied soldiers find him and then they drop dead…
The starving boy that is incredibly emaciated walks out of the concentration camp, finds little food to eat, then a coin and another and he walks across borders, with some reserves in his pocket and a revolver with six shots, which he needs to defend himself when he sleeps outside at night…he walks to his former house, thinking that he will find refuge there and stay, remaining at the farm until he dies…
He finds at the old farm his former nanny, her husband – and he used to work for Tendler’s family as well – and the two sons they have…they were conserved almost brothers and they are now twice the size of the boy that had just come out of Hell…Nanny and her husband express their happiness at seeing the master return to take back his property and she kills a chicken and because this is not enough for such a celebration, she sacrifices the goat…alas, when Tendler goes out to piss and stays near the kitchen, he hears the woman say that they have to slit his throat during the night, because otherwise he will take back all that they have now come to see as their own fortune…thus, the boy from the camps uses his revolver and shoots all the bastards, only he also kills a baby girl that is only a few years old…
10 out of 10
There is a sense of déjà vu when reading about some of what happens in this remarkable, tragic short story, but it could well be that it has such a power to penetrate and shake you that you may feel it has been there for quite some time…there may be another explanation, that the most repugnant things that humans do are similar, contrary to what the first sentence of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina says: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” and the awful sounds familiar…
In the first few lines something quite terrible happens, though there is the familiar now – since this is the last story in the What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank collection – humor, satire that Nathan Englander uses…the incident happens during the short war that followed the nationalization of the Suez Canal, under the brazen, reckless leadership of a nationalist – one that announces the age of Trump, Le Pen, BolsaNero and the rest of the Wild Bunch – when France fought along with Britain and Israel, until the Americans said stop…incidentally, it could be an interesting thought experiment to try and put into perspective the incredible closeness between the US and Israel that is so clear today and imagine what the situation might have been with the attitudes of the present…
There would first be America plunging in to fight together with Israel, maybe a reluctant Britain deciding to join forces, but it is not an established fact, while France would most likely stay away…we have after all the precedent where Jacques Chirac has said no to the USA demand to fight in the Middle East and then the republicans mainly – those who are now led by fools, committed to the cult of Trump, the Big Lie, stupid, false claims that the elections have stolen…and then when you have no reliable elections, and they are ‘a massive fraud’, you are left with a tyranny, it is the end of democracy – decided to boycott the French and stop eating French fries…well, eat them, but use a different name…
‘During the 1956 Sinai Campaign there were soldiers in the Israeli Army and soldiers in the Egyptian Army who ended up wearing identical French-supplied uniforms to battle…Not long into the fighting, an Israeli platoon came to rest at a captured Egyptian camp to the east of Bir Gafgafa, in the Sinai Desert…There Private Shimmy Gezer (formerly Shimon Bibberblat, of Warsaw, Poland) sat down to eat at a makeshift outdoor mess…Four armed commandos sat down with him…He grunted…They grunted…Shimmy dug into his lunch…’
And then Shimmy’s comrade, Tendler – the one who would become a professor of philosophy – shoots all the four commandos in the head and they all die almost instantly, to the horror of the private, who protests and is aghast at what has just happened and attacks the killer over this useless murder…
It has to do with the uniforms mentioned, they looked like they belonged to the same army, but they were the enemy…still, you should not shoot them like that, they were just about to sit down and eat and you could and should have taken them prisoners…it something along these lines, but the effect is that Tendler is infuriated and when Shimmy does not stop, he jumps on him and fights the man with fury…
Years later, Shimmy Gezer will show his son, Etgar, the scars and the damage left on his check by this vicious attack, for Tendler was not satisfied with just a pummeling, he took vengeance with application…in spite of this serious event, for years later, indeed, to the end of his life and then after that, his son will continue with the habit, Shimmy will give free fruit to the professor that had abused him during one of the many wars he had fought in, just like he gives Free Fruit for the Young Widows and tells them they sacrificed, we sacrifice, what is a bag of apples…nothing, only for the professor it is hard to see why…
When challenged by Etgar, after his bar mitzvah, at thirteen, once he will have become a man, his father tells him that many have died in World War II, more than six million Jews, while Tendler has survived, but somehow only in body, otherwise they have killed him we are to understand…then the gruesome, tragic, terrible narrative of what had happened to the professor is told, his interment in the concentration camps, where all of his family has been killed, mother and father shot in front of him and all his other relatives…
The way he escapes is also horrible, in that some of those working with the dead bodies try to get some leeway for the jobs they do and allow the poor boy to hide in the mountain of corpses that is piling high…they come with more dead Jews and they let him get out and then find some space again between the decomposing corpses, where ultimately a couple of allied soldiers find him and then they drop dead…
The starving boy that is incredibly emaciated walks out of the concentration camp, finds little food to eat, then a coin and another and he walks across borders, with some reserves in his pocket and a revolver with six shots, which he needs to defend himself when he sleeps outside at night…he walks to his former house, thinking that he will find refuge there and stay, remaining at the farm until he dies…
He finds at the old farm his former nanny, her husband – and he used to work for Tendler’s family as well – and the two sons they have…they were conserved almost brothers and they are now twice the size of the boy that had just come out of Hell…Nanny and her husband express their happiness at seeing the master return to take back his property and she kills a chicken and because this is not enough for such a celebration, she sacrifices the goat…alas, when Tendler goes out to piss and stays near the kitchen, he hears the woman say that they have to slit his throat during the night, because otherwise he will take back all that they have now come to see as their own fortune…thus, the boy from the camps uses his revolver and shoots all the bastards, only he also kills a baby girl that is only a few years old…
February 5, 2010
The reviews (three pages of them inside the book itself) are not so much positive as they are rapturous -- and I just don't get it. In most of these stories, nothing happens. Lots and lots of physical description and carefully wrought details and painstaking scene-setting ... and virtually no there, there. It's Fabergé fiction, literary short stories as netsuke. I don't know why I continue to be shocked that so much of the fiction that is rewarded today (with publication, with major reviews, with a serious marketing effort on the publisher's part) is of this style, but I'm just going to keep saying that I find it disappointing reading. To be sure, some of the stories in the collection are more interesting than others, but on the whole, I'd rather be napping.
June 24, 2007
This is an incredible collection of short stories about Jews. The first one didn't just make me cry - I sobbed. All of the stories were good, several were splendid and heart-wrenching. Each one felt like a tiny novel rather than a short story.
Each story somehow related to my own history (I am the child of a father who was a concentration camp inmate and a mother who was a first generation new yorker brought up on the lower east side of Manhattan whose first language was yiddish). I'm sure that was part of the draw of these stories, but it wasn't all of it. They are wonderful.
Each story somehow related to my own history (I am the child of a father who was a concentration camp inmate and a mother who was a first generation new yorker brought up on the lower east side of Manhattan whose first language was yiddish). I'm sure that was part of the draw of these stories, but it wasn't all of it. They are wonderful.
July 7, 2007
Some of the stories are very funny, especially the one about the middle-aged New York businessman who discovers his Jewish soul in a taxi cab. And the one about the wigmaker. Ludicrous set-ups, yet very poignant and (I found) easy to relate to and universal. The first two, about Russians being deported to concentration camps, are gut wrenching. The last one about living in Israel and surviving a bomb attack was the only one I didn't like, the style and sentiments seemed a bit contrived, even though it was the only one very clearly autobiographical. Anyhow I'm dying to read his novel now.
September 8, 2012
This collection of beautifully written short stories surprised me. Some are quite humorous ("Reb Kringle" being my favorite of these), with a droll sensibility pervading the majority. However, three of the stories are deadly serious, with subject matter ranging from the horrors of WWII to the modern-day prevalence of terrorism in Jerusalem.I expect to be haunted by "The Tumblers" for some time to come, especially by the heart-breaking final paragraph.
April 8, 2008
englander reads like a much older person from a much older time. the picture on the back of the book didn't correspond, for me, with the words inside it. which is, i think, what made how much i enjoyed this collection such a pleasant surprise. favorite stories: the tumblers, the wig, the gilgul of park avenue, the last one way, in this way we are wise.
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