kaddish.com, Nathan Englander
kaddish.com, Nathan Englander
List: $17.50 | Sale: $12.25
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kaddish.com
A novel

Author: Nathan Englander

Narrator: Rob Shapiro

Unabridged: 5 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/26/2019

Synopsis

The celebrated Pulitzer finalist and prize-winning author of Dinner at the Center of the Earth and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank delivers his best work yet, a streamlined comic masterpiece about a son’s failure to say Kaddish for his father.
Larry is the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews.  When his father dies, it’s his responsibility to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months.  To the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses—imperiling the fate of his father’s soul.  To appease her, Larry hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the prayer and shepherd his father’s soul safely to rest.
Sharp, irreverent, hilarious, and wholly irresistible, Englander’s tale of a son who makes a diabolical compromise ingeniously captures the tensions between tradition and modernity—a book to be devoured in a single sitting whose pleasures and provocations will be savored long after.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ron on March 25, 2019

“Kaddish.com” is a novel, but its first part serves as another reminder of Nathan Englander’s extraordinary skill as a short story writer. Set 20 years before the rest of the book, it describes a contentious family gathering following a patriarch’s death. Larry — the black sheep — has come from Broo......more

Goodreads review by Lark on August 01, 2020

People compare Nathan Englander to Philip Roth and it's a fair comparison only in that they are both Jewish and they both have a talent for writing scenes that include masturbation. But Roth lived at a time when he felt his goals included defining for his readers what it meant to be a secular Americ......more

Goodreads review by Alex on April 03, 2019

2.5 Like many secular Jews, I am a fan of Philip Roth, whose irreverent audacious writing did not shy away from tackling the issue of Jewish identity in the United States, especially the generational conflicts between the more conservative religious generation and younger and more secular liberal you......more

Quotes

One of Esquire’s Most Anticipated Books of 2019
A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2019
The Millions Most Anticipated for 2019
One of Vulture’s Most Anticipated in 2019
A Boston Globe Most Anticipated for 2019
One of Read It Forward’s Most Anticipated for 2019
One of TIME’s Most Anticipated for March 2019


"Sublime...kaddish.com reads like a modern-day Hasidic tale in which religious characters are bedeviled by the challenges of upholding God's word in an all too human world... Kafka and Roth's influences are felt in Englander's work... In this tender, wry and entertaining novel, Englander nimbly juggles these possibilities, creating an endearing hero who stumbles through a world in which the holy and profane are intertwined."
—The New York Times

"The humor of kaddish.com is infused with delight... What a rare blessing to find a smart and witty novel about the unexpected ways religious commitment can fracture a life — and restore it."
—Washington Post

"A marvelous comic fable... Englander’s expansive imagination is such that he can convincingly write the part of a secular Jewish hipster and a born-again Jew - and do it with the Yiddish inflections of a Borscht Belt comedian... [A] delight of a novel."
—AP

"Tantalizing.. Elegant... Englander’s prose is always sprightly. He makes it easy to turn the page."
—Forward

"A delight... kaddish.com is a lighthearted, typically offbeat romp from the fertile imagination of novelist Nathan Englander."
—American Jewish World

"Englander portrays that frantic quest--one that jeopardizes Shuli's marriage, his job, even his sanity—with curiosity and deep sympathy, evoking a response that transcends the boundaries of any particular faith."
—Shelf Awareness

"Englander is mischievously hilarious, nightmarish, suspenseful, inquisitive, and deliriously tender in this concentrated tale of tradition and improvisation, faith and love."
—Booklist

"[An] excellent comic dissection of Jewish-American life...This novel reads like Chaim Potok filtered through the sensibility of Mel Brooks. Englander writes cogently about Jewish-American assimilation, and, in his practiced hands, he makes Shuli’s journey, both outer and inner, a simultaneously humorous and deeply moving one."
—Publishers Weekly

"Englander demonstrates his skill at placing timeless concerns of Judaism in sharply modern circumstances."
—Kirkus Reviews

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