The Golems of Gotham: A Novel

The Golems of Gotham is about Oliver Levin, a mystery writer suffering from writer's block and his daughter, Ariel, an apparent musical prodigy of the klezmer violin although she has never played a day in her life. In an effort to help her father's block and to rescue him emotionally from his past baggage, Ariel uses Kabbalah magic to create golems. However, things go awry and instead she conjures the spirits of Jewish writers including Primo Levi, Jean Amery, Paul Celan, Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, and Tadeusz Borowski and also Oliver's parents, Lothar and Rose. The Golems are united by the fact that they all committed suicide after surviving the Holocaust.

Boy, was this book depressing! It took me forever to get through because of show more it. Every page I turned, I felt weighed down. When happiness did occur, it felt like a Pyrrhic Victory, it came at such a cost that I wonder was it worth it at the end? Thane Rosenbaum writes beautifully. I wanted to get lost in his prose.

He also expanded the scope because it was not all about the tragic history of the Levins; it discussed the Holocaust seriously even condemning Life is Beautiful as inappropriate. Rosenbaum showed how the Holocaust was the worst inhuman atrocity that can never be forgotten. It seeps into the blood and bones of all who were present. The Golems of Gotham is about humanity's need to forget and desensitizing of tragic events; of putting the past behind and trudging forward.

The only problem is that by ignoring the past, the present numbs causing the future to stifle. Rosenbaum argues the past, no matter how awful, has to be embraced but not all at once and not universally because that would be too much. I liked The Golems of Gotham but I felt it got a little too preachy at the end. This book cannot be dark and fantastical for 97% of it and try to throw genuine therapeutic happiness as its last 3%. Continue to ride that dark wave; drag me kicking and screaming into the shadows with no regrets! show less

The Golems of Gotham is about Oliver Levin, a mystery writer suffering from writer's block and his daughter, Ariel, an apparent musical prodigy of the klezmer violin although she has never played a day in her life. In an effort to help her father's block and to rescue him emotionally from his past baggage, Ariel uses Kabbalah magic to create golems. However, things go awry and instead she conjures the spirits of Jewish writers including Primo Levi, Jean Amery, Paul Celan, Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, and Tadeusz Borowski and also Oliver's parents, Lothar and Rose. The Golems are united by the fact that they all committed suicide after surviving the Holocaust.

Boy, was this book depressing! It took me forever to get through because of show more it. Every page I turned, I felt weighed down. When happiness did occur, it felt like a Pyrrhic Victory, it came at such a cost that I wonder was it worth it at the end? Thane Rosenbaum writes beautifully. I wanted to get lost in his prose.

He also expanded the scope because it was not all about the tragic history of the Levins; it discussed the Holocaust seriously even condemning Life is Beautiful as inappropriate. Rosenbaum showed how the Holocaust was the worst inhuman atrocity that can never be forgotten. It seeps into the blood and bones of all who were present. The Golems of Gotham is about humanity's need to forget and desensitizing of tragic events; of putting the past behind and trudging forward.

The only problem is that by ignoring the past, the present numbs causing the future to stifle. Rosenbaum argues the past, no matter how awful, has to be embraced but not all at once and not universally because that would be too much. I liked The Golems of Gotham but I felt it got a little too preachy at the end. This book cannot be dark and fantastical for 97% of it and try to throw genuine therapeutic happiness as its last 3%. Continue to ride that dark wave; drag me kicking and screaming into the shadows with no regrets! show less

The Golems of Gotham is about Oliver Levin, a mystery writer suffering from writer's block and his daughter, Ariel, an apparent musical prodigy of the klezmer violin although she has never played a day in her life. In an effort to help her father's block and to rescue him emotionally from his past baggage, Ariel uses Kabbalah magic to create golems. However, things go awry and instead she conjures the spirits of Jewish writers including Primo Levi, Jean Amery, Paul Celan, Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, and Tadeusz Borowski and also Oliver's parents, Lothar and Rose. The Golems are united by the fact that they all committed suicide after surviving the Holocaust.

Boy, was this book depressing! It took me forever to get through because of show more it. Every page I turned, I felt weighed down. When happiness did occur, it felt like a Pyrrhic Victory, it came at such a cost that I wonder was it worth it at the end? Thane Rosenbaum writes beautifully. I wanted to get lost in his prose.

He also expanded the scope because it was not all about the tragic history of the Levins; it discussed the Holocaust seriously even condemning Life is Beautiful as inappropriate. Rosenbaum showed how the Holocaust was the worst inhuman atrocity that can never be forgotten. It seeps into the blood and bones of all who were present. The Golems of Gotham is about humanity's need to forget and desensitizing of tragic events; of putting the past behind and trudging forward.

The only problem is that by ignoring the past, the present numbs causing the future to stifle. Rosenbaum argues the past, no matter how awful, has to be embraced but not all at once and not universally because that would be too much. I liked The Golems of Gotham but I felt it got a little too preachy at the end. This book cannot be dark and fantastical for 97% of it and try to throw genuine therapeutic happiness as its last 3%. Continue to ride that dark wave; drag me kicking and screaming into the shadows with no regrets! show less