The Golem of Brooklyn: A Novel

For me, this was the right book at the right time. I needed a good laugh, and I was laughing out loud at many points, especially the "Larry David" parts. I loved the diverse group of zany characters who somehow meshed with each other. I love the sense of place in Williamsburg -- on both sides of Division Street. I loved the combination of Jewish folklore with modern issues. Always great when there is an unlikely hero or heroine, although Len and Miri are more anti-hero and anti-heroine. Always love a cat in a story, especially when he gets to narrate a chapter. So many surprising, witty, ironic elements in the book. Very highly recommended.

Fantasy? Wishful thinking? Food for thought at a time when thought should be provoked. Frightening but interesting. Read it and think.

An excellent, poignant premise and a beautifully calibrated, hilarious beginning, both of which dissolve into a hurried narrative punctuated by irrelevant sub-stories and populated by minor characters who are given lengthy expositions only to disappear from the book’s pages without a trace. Even Len and Miri, so carefully drawn at the start, transform into caricatures of themselves halfway through. The ending falls flat. The book does provide something of crash course in Talmudic and medieval Judaism, as well as in the horrors of more recent history, and the golem can be such a marvelously fraught guide through it all — but not here.

Read this for my book club. Created a good discussion. Happy to have gotten it delivered so quickly.

A good quick read to help repair the world.

I laughed till I cried. Then I just cried. A modern Jewish fairytale. It reminded me of the joy I had reading The Wise Men of Chelm when I was a child. This felt like coming home. So hilariously funny, so soul-destroying sad. So timely and so relevant.

This was an irreverent, fast-paced stomp of a novel, and one that speaks to our current geopolitical moment in bold and fascinating ways. Great satire doesn't always land well, but when it's done correctly, I instantly gravitate toward it. Not being familiar with Jewish history or folklore, I thought that this would be a fine entry point, and just like a minor character encountered here, I might have also guessed prior that the "golem" in question was a character from "The Lord of the Rings." Little did I know that golem references date back to the Bible and Talmud, and they've been embedded in popular culture all the way to current times. The main characters leapt off of the page, starting with Len Bronstein, a disillusioned art teacher who crafts a lopsided and anatomically correct golem from stolen clay at a fancy private school; his best stoner/dealer friend, Waleed; and Miri, a once-devout Hasidic Jew turned bodega employee and out lesbian who's needed for her Yiddish. Nothing could have prepared me for The Golem, a profane, nine-foot-tall, "alive, but not alive," acid-dropping, Larry David-loving, killing machine servant of God. "The Golem is for time of Jewish crisis. Where is crisis?" As it turns out, antisemitism is pretty much everywhere, but specifically, the crisis is at a "Save Our History's Future" white supremacist rally in Kentucky. What better occasion for a disastrous, hijinks-filled road-trip and detours into conspiracy rabbit holes and disinformation? (I'd gladly forgotten about 4chan, replacement theory, and Jewish space lasers.) The historical passages were somewhat plodding, and I wanted more cohesiveness from the gang's choppy misadventures and abrupt ending. Or maybe I just wanted more zany antics and sage wisdom from The Golem, a blunt, marvel of a character that I won't soon forget.Much thanks to Random House and NetGalley for ARC access.

This book is what a novel should be- original, thought provoking and a delight to read. And there is a lot of true history in it, too, which I had to look up because I know nothing about Jewish history.