November 5, 2007
The lives of a young Jewish man in the 1930s and a young Czech woman in the 1980s echo across generations in Mansbach's (Angry Black White Boy
) continuing investigations into ethnic identity. Tristan Brodsky, the son of New York Jewish immigrant parents, is introduced to pre-WWII jazz and African-American culture by a City College professor who mentors him into a mostly successful, though often controversial, career as a novelist. Tristan's grandson and namesake, known as Tris, is a suburban teen in thrall to hip-hop culture who becomes a novelist himself. (Tris's writerly angst provides some of the funniest scenes in the book.) Then there's Nina Hricek, a talented young Czech photographer who is all but adopted by a touring American jazz group passing through Prague: the black band members affectionately dub her “Pigfoot†and insist that she must be part Creole. Nina becomes a sort of apprentice to the group's tour photographer. One night, when covering a gig at New York's Blue Note, she locks eyes with a man working at the club—Tris. Mansbach moves effortlessly between U.S. jazz clubs of different eras and Communist Prague, and his dialogue rings true. Believably eccentric characters and an inventive cross-generational plot make this novel of immigration's vicissitudes a delight.
January 15, 2008
A young author of note, Mansbach ("Angry Black White Boy") takes on three generations of the Brodsky family in this epic of American life from the mid-1930s to the end of the 1990s. Tristan Brodsky, who grows up playing stickball in the Jewish Bronx, is constantly at odds with his family. At Queens College, he comes under the influence of a literature professor and is thrown into the world of black jazz musicians. Eventually, Tristan becomes a writerhis first book, "The Angel of the Shtetel", portrays his atheist anger about the woes of immigrant life and the sad plight of the Jewsand he strongly influences American culture. His wife, a poet with a different agenda, tends to his needs. Their grandson Tris, aka RISK, a revolutionary, graffiti writer, and hip-hop aficionado, follows in his grandfather's footsteps and becomes a writer, but the angst he expresses reflects the end of the 20th century. Tris also hooks up with Nina Hricek, a teenage Czech refugee and photographer who has come to America with a black jazz band. Thus, all three characters have connections with black musicians, dreams that are unfulfilled, and a dollop of Jewish self-hatred. A well-written novel but with an overly interwoven plot.Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2007
Tristan Brodsky is glad to escape his Bronx neighborhood of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, and he eventually grows up to become a famous writer. But in the 1950s, when he writes a novel about the Jewish role in the slave trade, he is furiously attacked (does he not care about the Holocaust?). In Communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, Nina hides her Jewish identity, her academic father escapes to America, and she and her mother never hear from him; then she joins up with a touring jazz band, returns with them to America, and learns why her dad is hiding from her. She marries Tristans grandson, Tris, a rebel writer who betrays his grandfather. These are just some of the intricate threads in this multigenerational saga. It is sometimes hard to follow whos who, but the wry drama of secrets, sorrow, and forgiveness is rooted in the American literary tradition of finding home, a tradition that Jews have helped to create.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)