Ideas and ideologies in the style of allegories with a tendency to veer off into the weird and surreal, Ozick has quite a tongue-in-cheek style that occasionally lands in a self-parody - or at least what I hope is self-parody - of late twentieth century New York Jewish intellectualism. The titular story was probably not the best introduction to Ozick, but I found that it helped to imagine her voice actually narrating the story (my only previous awareness of Ozick was, y'know, that video, the persona she presented in that short video basically set the whole tone of Levitation for me). The most accessible story, or one that most follows the conventional structures of a story, is Puttermesser. Despite not being familiar with Jewish folklore, I still quite enjoyed the story and learnt a few things. My favourite is Shots - which made me wonder how much Susan Sontag and Ozick influenced each other or if photography was just one of the big theme of their time to be dissected - followed by From a Refugee's Notebook.

Old ideas but presented from a slightly new perspective (doesn't that just describe almost every book ever?) that makes it worth reading, and perhaps better when studied critically. ( )

The accent in these five stories is on fable, tradition and identity. Good, but not her best. ( )

This is another book I wish I had read in college. Ozick is so dang smart, and packs so much into her stories, I feel like I'm missing a lot by not studying them with a professor or at least in a group. Except for Grace Paley, I've never read any consciously Jewish American fiction by a woman (Bellow, Malamud, sure...). It was refreshing. I'll definitely seek out more Ozick in the future. ( )