Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives: Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of perpetually impending doom.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
The funniest book about hopelessness that you will read:
Herman Broder has a habit of analyzing his life and placing it in to a larger and unworkable context to justify his misery. Why should one care about his relationships with other humans if the heat death of the universe will inevitably stop all movement in the universe. Why should I help that old lady avoid getting hit by a bus crossing the street if Hitler callously killed millions of jews as if he were a busdriver running over colonies of ants. Herman seems determined to place his life's journey in to a... more info
Enemies, a love story:
It is the first book by Isaac Singer I read and it won't be the last. A wonderful tale about the strengths and weaknesses of the human heart and mind masterfully written.
Everything Jewish:
New York after the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. Herman Broder lives a frantic life between 2 wives, and soon to be three. He writes books for a rabbi. His life is a lie, a big lie to which he's grown used. His mind is a mess, just as his life is. The women around him are products of their survival experiences in Europe during the war, as he is too. Religion is present in every page, almost every line, whether it's mentioned with hate or with hope. Things Jewish are ever present: one gets to learn a lot about... more info
here is my review on this:
In New York The hotel staff gave me the chair that Isaac B Singer used to lean his back against years before he died custom made produced out of gentle wings of butterflies that circled his first wife's head every day and night in Treblinka before she finally went up in smoke So I went down at the front desk A weird occurence of that strange and powerful thing I certainly wanted to bring to their... more info
