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In this acclaimed fiction debut, "a rich, often ironic homage to Yiddish culture and language" (Publishers Weekly), Peter Manseau weaves 100 years of Jewish history, the sad fate of an ancient language, and a love story shaped by destiny into a truly great American novel.
In a five-story walkup in Baltimore, nonagenarian Itsik Malpesh—the last Yiddish poet in America—spends his days lamenting the death of his language and dreaming of having his memoirs and poems translated into a living tongue. So when a twenty-one-year-old translator and collector of Judaica crosses his path one day, he goes to extraordinary efforts to enlist the young man’s services. And what the translator finds in ten handwritten notebooks is a chronicle of the twentieth century. From the Easter Sunday Pogrom of Kishinev, Russia, to the hellish garment factories of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Itsik Malpesh recounts a tumultuous, heartrending, and colorful past. But the greatest surprise is yet to come: for the two men share a connection as unlikely as it is life-affirming.
With the ardent and feisty Itsik Malpesh, Peter Manseau has created a narrator for the ages and given him a story that will win over readers’ hearts and keep them turning pages long into the night. Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter is a literary triumph.
- Sales Rank: #1182495 in Books
- Brand: Manseau, Peter
- Published on: 2009-06-09
- Released on: 2009-06-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x 1.10" w x 5.50" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Known for Vows, his memoir of growing up the son of a former priest and nun, Manseau uses an alter ego to tell the story of fictional Yiddish poet Itsik Malpesh, born in the Moldovan city of Kishinev in 1903. Itsik's story is told through his Yiddish memoirs, which he helps a young American Catholic (working, like Manseau once did, as a Yiddish archivist) translate. Inspired by the image of Sasha, the brave butcher's daughter who was present at his birth, Itsik reaches America in young adulthood through haphazard luck, a taste for troublemaking and the inventiveness of a printer. Sasha continually inspires and confounds Itsik throughout his life, becoming an apt symbol for Yiddish humor, sorrow and idealism. As Itsik's darkly picaresque immigrant narrative unfolds, it competes with the translator's modern romance and with insights into the art of translation and the history of Yiddish. Occasional narrative missteps are not enough to undercut this rich, often ironic homage to Yiddish culture and language. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Fleeing violent anti-Semitism in Russia and then in Poland in the 1920s, Yiddish poet Itzik Malpesh stepped off the boat in New York at age 16 in the Golden Land, “alone, with nowhere to go and no way to get there.” Now, in his 90s and living in Baltimore, he employs a 21-year-old religious scholar to translate his memoirs into English. Far from your usual immigrant journey to the promised land, the intricate narrative weaves together Malpesh’s account of his “life and crimes,” including his job scrubbing floors, with the translator’s discoveries of the poet’s secret life, then and now. Always on Malpesh’s journeys what sustains him is the story of his birth during a pogrom, when Sasha, the ritual butcher’s daughter, just four years old, chased away the killers and saved the baby. Ever since being told of the girl's courageous feat, his romantic obsession has been to find Sasha––until she arrives in America in the 1930s, a tough, beautiful, Hebrew-speaking Israeli, who despises Yiddish and the old ways and tells him what really happened. Rooted in the sharp, bittersweet Yiddish tradition reminiscent of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Manseau’s thrilling tale of secrets and revelations captures the diversity among Jews, then and now, in shtetl, city, and kibbutz, and the elemental meaning of bashert, or destiny. Like the translator in the story, the writer Manseau is not Jewish. --Hazel Rochman
Review
"An extraordinary novel, and Itsik Malpesh is one of literature's most stunning achievements." -- Junot Díaz
"Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a completely original and exciting novel that, from its first few lines, holds the reader mesmerised. We are in the hands of a supreme storyteller, an author of wit and charm, one who has a breathtaking flair for language. This is a seriously impressive and accomplished work for a debut novel, identifying Manseau as a writer of great and exciting potential, one able to see the world vividly, even through other people's eyes." -- Weekend Australian
"In his debut novel, [Manseau] reaches across cultures to compose a living, breathing portrait of a bad-tempered but charmingly eloquent poet and the young man chosen to bring his words forward in time...The translator's inexperience puts [poet] Malpesh's cynical voice into perspective, as the young man's clumsy first experiences with modern-day romance stand in stark, sometimes poignant contrast to Malpesh...who remembers his 90-something years with equal parts impish humor and profound melancholy...A terrific book with a believable protagonist who's given ample room to tell his tale." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a book about writing, a warm, funny, and fascinating testament to the power of words, a power that outlives a dying language and transcends love." -- Jewish Book World
"Seductive and playful, the novel, with many unforgettable scenes, is also a serious meditation on language, love, loyalty and memory." -- New York Jewish Week
"Ranging from pogroms to poetry, from the purity of sex to the impurity of translation, from the Pale of Settlement to the Lower East Side to Eretz Yisroael, [and] written with utmost integrity as well as dramatic momentum, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a delicious read." -- Melvin Jules Bukiet, author of Sign and Wonders
"One of the most original and gripping novels I've read in a long time. From the very first page, I knew I was in the hands of a mesmerizing storyteller and born writer. Blessed with a biting wit, a huge heart, and a dazzling flair for language -- how we use it and how it defines us -- Manseau is the real thing. This is a gorgeous debut novel." -- Ellen Feldman, author of The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank
"Huge in scope and soul, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a sweeping, lyrical, utterly consuming epic. Peter Manseau is a writer with the heart of a mystic, and his novel is an extraordinary gift." -- Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia and How This Night Is Different
"Songs for the Butcher's Daughter explores with profound insight the treacherous territory of language: its elusive, inconstant and enigmatic character and its fundamental role in how we define ourselves as human beings." -- Linda Olsson, author of Astrid and Veronika
"Peter Manseau has created a rich tapestry of European and American Jewish life at the turn of the twentieth century. This beautifully written novel of love and tragedy is a magic-realist tale filled with wonderful detail. We join Mr. Manseau on a hundred-year journey that weaves together the Old and New Worlds." -- Martin Lemelman, author of Mendel's Daughter
Most helpful customer reviews
40 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
Nicely presented, but a strange dichotomy of messages
By Patrick W. Crabtree
Sometimes, depending upon our respective backgrounds, readers enjoy a book on varying grounds. I enjoyed this one quite a lot but I doubt for the reasons which the author intended -- the story that I seized upon was perhaps a different one than what Manseau believed himself to have written. I'll try to clarify this as I explain further.
Here we have chiefly a love story, perhaps even a couple. The opening backdrop is that of Jewish persecution which mostly transpires in Europe but some in the U.S. as well. We get to know the protagonist from his birth and we follow him for his lifetime... in fact, this fictional work is his life story. He is a Yiddish-speaking Jewish man by the name of Itsik Malpesh, born in Kishinev (Russia), a temporary resident of Odessa, and eventually an immigrant to Baltimore, Maryland.
For a long while the reader is shrewdly drawn into Itsik's world which seems a cruel one indeed. In fact, it's a cruel time and place for all Jewish people as Itsik is born into a period of Russian Pogroms. Yet, as I approached the end of this novel, in retrospect, I had to revise my thinking about Itsik because his numerous life disasters seemed a direct result of his own obstinacies and intolerance for taking good advice. Only when he was forced to do certain things did life smile upon him a bit including both his immigration to the United States as well as the obtaining of a job.
But even in the face of good advice, Itsik often managed to train wreck his own existence. Ultimately, he commits an act which is notably glossed over but which would have been an outright horror for his victim -- and I could not personally get past this singular incident and share any further empathy with Itsik. In fact, his agenda became more and more clear to me as self-serving. In Itsik's world, everything is all about Itsik and I doubt that the author really intended for his readers to reach this particular conclusion.
Many others will perhaps draw a different picture from this story, in contrast to my own reading experience. I suppose it's possible to say that if life has treated you horrifically enough, then maybe you have some sort of right to be excused later on down the road for your own heinous acts; however, that's simply not a philosophy which, personally, I can either accept or support.
Itsik spoke practically no English until later in life and, given this actuality, he wrote his poems in Yiddish and later required a translator for his work. Thus, for the purposes of the novel we get an intermittent "translator's note" (that is always more like a short chapter) which tells a converging story. It's relevant to point out that the "translator" here is a Catholic. Toward the end of the book, these two tales do in fact come to a junction and that format is one of the book's big pluses. This is a unique presentation and it's nicely facilitated.
The novel itself flows like oil and, in that regard, is some of the best contemporary writing which I've recently experienced. You can read this book in two days without much difficulty. I will comment that it's helpful if you have some prior knowledge of 20th Century European history and/or of Jewish culture -- but if you don't, you'll still generally get the big picture of the story.
In summary, I would definitely recommend this title to anyone interested in recent Jewish history or in good, solid fiction -- but those who are emotionally sensitive should be prepared for a few bumps along the way.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
How did a Catholic boy write this?
By Susan Tunis
I am a secular Jew. Like myself, this novel is far more ethnic than religious. It's incredibly Jewish, but at the same time wonderfully inclusive. What I mean is, you do NOT have to be Jewish to read and enjoy this novel. In fact, it is a tale literally being told by an outsider.
Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a story within a story. On the surface, it is the fictionalized autobiography of Itsik Malpesh, "the last Yiddish poet in America." Born in 1903 in the middle of a Russian pogrom, Malpesh leads a picaresque life that takes him from the town of his birth to Odessa, from Odessa to New York, and eventually to Baltimore, Maryland. It's a long, eventful, tragic, dramatic, funny, and occasionally joyful life. In the course of its telling, Malpesh documents anti-Semitism in the old world, the birth of Israel, the death of Yiddish, the American immigrant experience, and a saga of star-crossed love. But it's so much more. Itsik's is such a human story! It's beautiful and compelling and grabbed me right from the opening pages.
The story within this story comes in the form of copious "translator's notes." Itsik's memoir was written in his native tongue, Yiddish. His story is being filtered through an unlikely translator, a young, non-Jewish, college grad with an all-but-useless theology degree. The most marketable of his skills is his knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet. It's enough to get him a job in a warehouse of Yiddish literature run by a Jewish organization. Bored beyond belief, this nameless narrator teaches himself the language and embarks on his own journey which eventually leads to nonagenarian Itsik Malpesh.
Amazingly, Itsik's story and the narrator's story have strange little connections that reminded me of the subtle connections between the stories in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. However, these coincidental connections shouldn't have surprised, as the past never really seemed to stay the past in Itsik's long life. People came and went and reappeared when and where you least expected them. Or perhaps where you most expected them. Call backs and foreshadowing were used to good effect, and overall the writing of this debut was impressive. The story started to drag just a bit late in the novel, but the ending was so satisfying that it hardly seems worth mentioning. This is a truly auspicious debut, and I will be waiting with considerable interest to see what Peter Manseau writes next.
39 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
Envy; Or, Yiddish in America
By Jeffrey Sharlet
Disclosure: I read this in manuscript. Peter's a friend and a former collaborator. He reviewed my recent book kindly. But all that said, I've a very good reason to loathe this book: because it's so good. There we were, sort of moving along on parallel tracks as writers. Then, this. Peter's left me in the dust. I ought to hate this book as a symbol of my own failures as a writer. But it really is so good that I can't hate it. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is, depending on how you look at it, the weirdly inevitable culmination of Yiddish literature, or its last gasp. (Don't worry -- it's in English.) Peter is really *not* Jewish. His mother was a nun. His father still is a Catholic priest. (Don't ask. But if you do -- if you're that kind of Jew -- read Peter's deeply Yiddish Catholic memoir, *Vows: A Story of a Priest, a Nun, and their Son*.) I met him years ago when we both worked at the National Yiddish Book Center. We were a bunch of Jews enamored of the idea of Yiddish. Peter, the unbelieving Catholic, was one of the few people there who could actually read Yiddish. He was inspired to learn it by an African American cantor named Julius Lester.
Not that Peter was a convert. I think he was the one who introduced me to this line by the great Yiddish poet Yankev Glatshteyn that I've been quoting ever since: Der got fun meyn ungloybn iz priptek. The God of my unbelief is magnificent. Peter and I used it as an epigraph for a book we wrote together, *Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible*, but it'd work well for his new novel, *Songs for the Butcher's Daughter*, too. The plot: A goy much like Peter works at an outfit much like the Yiddish Book Center where he falls in love with a baal tshuva much like -- well, she's happily married now, so we'll just remind ourselves this is fiction. She, of course, doesn't know Yiddish, so she asks him to help her read an old Yiddish book in which she stores her bubbe's ancient love letters. Meanwhile, our hero gets a call from an equally ancient Yiddish writer who also needs a translator, for his memoirs. He's a Glatshteyn-like character, which is to say that he's like Edelshtein in Cynthia Ozick's story "Envy, or Yiddish in America." Which is to say, this old Yiddish writer feels forgotten by the world, unjustly ignored, bitter, envious of those were rescued from the Yiddish ghetto through the services of a translator.
So, what else is new? That's the story of Yiddish literature in a nutshell. Ah, but the story our hero translates -- the old man's memoir -- that's the treasure. You know Irving Howe's *Treasury of Yiddish Stories*? This story, *Songs for the Butcher's Daughter,* the translated memoir-within-the-novel, it's all the really good parts Howe left out: sex, violence, perversion, and -- oh, the worst of it, the nastiest of it, is a secret. If you know Yiddish literature -- af yidish, that is -- you might see it coming, because what Peter has done is to mine all the untranslated Yiddish literature on the dusty shelves of the Yiddish Book Center to create the great American patchwork Yiddish novel, in English. This is it: the greatest hits of Yiddish, bent, twisted, and -- forgive me -- born again in this novel by a man who is literally an abomination in the eyes of his own faith. To what end? A novel that captures the fundamental and enduring uneasiness of Yiddish in America like no other I've read, including Singer; a painful, cruel, bitter, funny and weirdly loving book that may well be the closest Yiddish will ever come to American English prose. It's not a translation or an approximation; it's a case of possession. This book is a dybbuk.
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