I've finished: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

I was really interested to see what Chabon would do with an alt-history where Israel did not gain independence in 1948.

I was glad to see that the focus was on the refugees in the Jewish reservation, on their reaction to the traumatic events of the 20th century, their long history in the diaspora and their distress as their legal status in the US is about to expire.

I was actually disappointed when external politics entered the picture.

I enjoyed the description of the many traumatized and flawed characters within the pressure cooker of this ghetto.

We don't get to see much of the external world, but this doesn't feel like a novel set in 2007. The noir tone is a large part of that but it feels like a US that didn't go through the 1960 civil rights era. This may be part of the alt-history, but the novel feels like it is set in the 1950's. The more modern technologies feel tacked on and superfluous.

I can understand why Chabon extended the timeline, it gives him an aging founder generation to work with and gives the revolutionary further of the first half of the 20th century time to simmer down.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/412192bc-6de1-4a8a-93b4-b1e1d996cf8d

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