#max gross

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Being trans is all about letting a 4'11" man get you pregnant.

Max Gross

[curhartwrites]

More Thoughts on "The Lost Shtetl"

My favorite part of reading "The Lost Shtetl," by Max Gross while preparing for my own Big Queer Jewish Wedding was sharing the story with my friend Angie. I don't drive, and Angie is a very good sweet soul who likes to drive, so we ran a lot of errands together in the weeks before the wedding. Angie is also an attentive and enthusiastically interested listener (in short, a very good friend). So on our car rides, I started to tell her about the book that I was reading, because I was excited about it and I knew that I could talk to Angie about it and she wouldn't get bored. Not only did Angie not get bored, she got invested. It got to a point where I had to make sure that I was reading at least a little every day, so that when I saw her, I could give her updates. I would climb into the passenger seat of her car to pick up shoes, or meet with our Rabbi, or buy kosher wine, and she would turn to look at me with big expectant eyes and demand: "So what happened to Pescha?!" Sharing the book with a friend in this way elevated the experience of reading it in a way I never would have expected, because it turned a work of printed fiction into a piece of juicy Jewish gossip. In a way, it reconnected the story to the rich cultural tradition of Jewish oral storytelling.

[curhartwrites]

Book Review: "The Lost Shtetl," by Max Gross

I received this novel as an early wedding gift, and started reading it in the weeks of preparation before joining my partner under the chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy). I became immediately enthralled with this story and its characters (of which there are many) not only because I happen to be the great great grandchild of Jewish immigrants from Poland, but because the book is written in such a way that it commands the reader's attention at every turn. Gross expertly weaves together the narrative threads of several different stories into a cohesive narrative which explores themes of loyalty, generational trauma, and the friction that naturally occurs between cultural and personal identity as we find our way in the world. While the subject matter is often heavy, it's approached with a frankness and a sense of humor that is emblematic of the timeless tradition of Jewish storytelling. There are moments of serendipity which border on the absurd, and yet at times I found myself forgetting that I was reading a work of fiction. Whether set against the backdrop of a temple in the middle of the forest, or the overwhelming sprawl of a street outside a RadioShack in Krakow, the people featured in this tangled narrative web feel intensely real. If you're interested in being taken on a whirlwind trip through time that is at turns a mystery, a political drama, a comedy, and a star-crossed romance, look no further.

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La aldea perdida - Max Gross (2022)

¿Y si una aldea perdida en los bosques de Polonia hubiese escapado milagrosamente a los horrores del siglo XX? Partiendo de esta brillante premisa, Max Gross ha urdido una ficción especulativa en la estela del mejor humor judío, un cruce entre Woody Allen, Michael Chabon y La vida es bella por el que obtuvo el National Jewish Book Award. Los habitantes de Kreskol, un shtetl o aldea judía, llevan…

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[lesserjoke]

Book #152 of 2021:

The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross

I expected to like this 2020 novel better from its premise, which is that an old Jewish town nestled in Poland’s forests somehow fell out of contact with the outside world, escaping the pogroms and the Nazi purge to remain undetected until the modern day. (Think Fiddler on the Roof crossed with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, roughly.) There’s an inherent poignancy in that idea of a pocket of Jews surviving the antisemitic horrors around them, as well as the patent potential for culture-clash comedy once the shtetl is rediscovered. Yet as it plays out here, there’s too much of a farce about the proceedings, and too much time spent chasing after threads of subplots that never really amount to anything. The tonal whiplash is a problem too, as when author Max Gross veers into heavily graphic details of the Holocaust when the residents finally learn about those atrocities. If this book could be trimmed down to its sharpest components, I think it would be a real winner. But as written, the effect is far more muted.

And it may be a smaller issue, but I also feel the glossary needs work — it’s very intrusive in the ebook version of the text, and many of the terms defined are either relatively clear from context or fairly basic concepts like Torah or challah that anyone even vaguely aware of Judaism should probably already know. This is an #ownvoices story from a particular perspective, and the unnecessary hand-holding to ensure gentile audiences understand every last Yiddishism leaves a further bad taste in my mouth.

Overall, I give the title three-out-of-five stars, reflecting a project with certain individual parts I’ve enjoyed well beyond their composite whole.

[Content warning for rape, slut-shaming, and racial slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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