The Books of Jacob

This is tough. I guess it contains spoilers.

What began as a joyful challenge eventually turned into an arduous slog. As I looked for resources to help guide me along reading it - anything to re-hook my interest - I found some intriguing advice: “Read it like a Pynchon.” “Read it like a Dostoevsky.” While it certainly boasted the grand scale and cast of characters reminiscent of these authors, it doesn’t seem to provide the same charm, whit or adventure. Having to look at BOJ through those lenses did it no favours — everything just become blurry.

All that said, something DID drive me to finish it. While I’m certain that I could’ve put the book down and walked away, I also made the choice to keep going. The slow momentum of the book does eventually hit its velocity of a sky-trailing comet (as BOJ sells itself) but it certainly takes a LONG time to reach those heights and leave behind the glacial pace that it establishes early on.

Whatever the journey had been, I will not be forgetting about Jacob Frank any time soon. It might even be worth forcing myself through another go-round. Putting a star rating on this feels perverse.

I zoomed through 100 pages a day for the first four days and then it took me a month to finish the rest. I’m not sure whether the drop in momentum was due to my book club deadline being pushed back, and so the pressure to finish being off, or whether the pacing of the novel slowed. There did seem to be a sag in the middle of the book.

I felt immersed in the locales of Poland/Ukraine/Bulgaria/Turkey/Greece and so much appreciated the early travels and travails of the Frankists as they followed their Messiah. The writing in these sections was vivid for me and really pulled me in. As Jacob got older and more narcissistic, I enjoyed his story less. I was also less interested in the sections set in Moravia and finally Germany. They lost some of the magic that was in the earlier parts of the book, as the striving became more social and conventional and less mystical.

The choice to have his story told by his followers and others was a good one, because the psyche of a character like him is very difficult to penetrate. And cult leaders do seem to be pretty similar to each other, regardless of time or place.

Overall, thumbs up, especially if you are interested in Jewish history of that time and place. That said, there were some places where I thought the author made some mistakes about Jewish naming practices and a few other small things that I wasn’t sure were intentional or artistic decisions, but maybe just the author’s lack of personal familiarity with certain parts of the culture.

Now when everyone says this is Olga Tokarczuk's Magnum Opus I can chime in with: Oh yes, definitely, or let's just call it masterpiece. I panned "Drive Your Plow over the Bonbes of the Dead" as near unreadable, since her militant naive animal rights activism took over and took over the writing. But I definitely wanted to try again, since that writing style is just so amazing, and all its strength come out in "The Books of Jacob". So that I finish this book, which is of the most unlikely topics for me to be interested in, and think - what over already - is a testament to its greatness. Normally, just a paragraph of religion makes me want to quit a book, but this one is chock full of it. But, also seeing as Olga Tokarczuk is an atheist/feminist, it subtely exposes its absurdities. This book is about many things, but all are not being pontificated on, but hidden in the subtext, narrated from lots of different perspectives. There definitely are themes of the absurdity of religion, how self-proclaimed (are there any others?) prophets actually just lust after women and girls, how cults spread; but also what life was in the 1700s in Europe, the full history, but with a focus on antisemitism. There are lots of comparisons that come to my mind -Gabriel García Márquez "Hundred Years of Solitude" in touches of magical realism (but with a purpose, more like Toni Morrison's "Beloved"), but also so many characters that have similar names, and change names multiple times each (while they move through different religions). Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, in historical narrative told in vignettes happening to the characters, and where the big things never happen immediately on the page; and a definite overall humurous undercurrent (in Tokarczuk's writing, Stephenson of course is on the nose). There's following a tradition of great woman writers, Doris Lessing say, in taking great care in the handling of their characters and strong feminist informedness. But I namedrop more to come to one conclusion - that Tokarczuk is one of only very few authors that are completely their own art, and please hand me any future author that you feel like namedropping Tokarczuk for.
Lastly, the main criticism that the story is so outlandish is absolutely countered by the fact that it is an actual, well researched, historical account.