Rachel Unkefer reviewed Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
Review of 'Books of Jacob' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
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, …
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.
