{"id":29188,"date":"2021-09-13T17:30:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T21:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=29188"},"modified":"2021-09-13T17:30:42","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T21:30:42","slug":"olga-tokarczuk-yente","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2021\/09\/13\/olga-tokarczuk-yente\/","title":{"rendered":"Olga Tokarczuk: “Yente”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Yente”<\/strong><\/span>
\nby Olga Tokarczuk<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft<\/span>
\nfrom the September 20, 2021 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ text_color=””]O[\/fusion_dropcap]lga Tokarczuk may be the author I’m most excited to read having never read one of her books. I think Flights<\/em> and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead<\/em> sound fascinating, and I’m very excited that early next year Riverhead is publishing her massive The Books of Jacob<\/em>. I will get to her soon, I hope! Indeed, this story is a chance to get a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to\u00a0The Books of Jacob<\/em> since it is an excerpt. In her interview with Deborah Treisman Tokarczuk recognizes that maybe an excerpt is no substitute for the novel itself:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard for me to talk about Yente, one character in a novel like \u201cThe Books of Jacob\u201d that\u2019s made up of so many threads, as though she were extricable from every other thread. Yente does play a unique role in the book because she\u2019s a strange and powerful narrator who\u2014thanks to her exceptional state\u2014can time-travel and has a panoptic view of the world presented in the book.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, wait. Did she say that Yente can time-travel? Is that a term of art for her role as a narrator or can Yente really time-travel? I am excited to find out! This opening paragraph makes me all the more excited:<\/p>\n

Asher Rubin goes in through the dark, muddy courtyard of Elisha\u2019s house, where just-slaughtered geese, fattened all summer long, hang upside down. He walks through a narrow entryway and smells the fried cutlets and onions, hears someone somewhere grinding pepper in a mortar. The women are noisy in the kitchen; the cold air is pierced by the steam that comes from there, from the dishes they\u2019re preparing. There are the smells of vinegar, nutmeg, bay leaves; there is the aroma of fresh meat, sweet and sickening. These scents make the autumn air seem even colder and more unpleasant.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, do you plan to read The Books of Jacob when it comes out? Did you enjoy this piece of the much larger book? Let me know below!<\/p>\n

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