kj2355's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
chocolatelady1957's review against another edition
4.0
What would happen if reincarnated souls influenced our lives without our knowledge? What if one of those souls was a fly, and that fly remembers his past life 300 years ago? Find out in my revised review of "Jacob's Folly" by Rebecca Miller, here. https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2015/06/13/a-literal-fly-on-the-wall/
kwilson271's review against another edition
4.0
An itinerant Jewish peddler from 17th century France dies and is re-incarnated as a fly in modern Long Island. At first he thinks he's an angel because he has wings, but he is no angel. Quite the contrary.
I loved this book, in part because the extreme suspension of disbelief necessary to read it results in a heavy investment on the reader's part. We tend to love things that we invest heavily, if only to feel better about it. Just when you think no more incredible things can happen, Miller demands that you believe more. I loved it for being outrageous.
My only real criticism of the book is the sudden moralizing turn that it takes at the end, as if the author remembered she has a responsibility to be uplifting at the last minute. It is not necessary for me that flies be redeemed. They can be flies.
I loved this book, in part because the extreme suspension of disbelief necessary to read it results in a heavy investment on the reader's part. We tend to love things that we invest heavily, if only to feel better about it. Just when you think no more incredible things can happen, Miller demands that you believe more. I loved it for being outrageous.
My only real criticism of the book is the sudden moralizing turn that it takes at the end, as if the author remembered she has a responsibility to be uplifting at the last minute. It is not necessary for me that flies be redeemed. They can be flies.
girlwithherheadinabook's review
4.0
Jacob's Folly begins with one of the most bewitching opening paragraphs I can remember:
I, the being in question, having spent nearly three hundred years lost as a pomegranate pip in a lake of aspic, amnesiac, bodiless and comatose, a nugget of spirit but nothing else, found myself quickening, gaining form and weight and, finally, consciousness. I did not remember dying, so my first thoughts were confused, and a little desperate.
With that, the reader is catapulted into the world of Jacob Cerf, 18th century pedlar and Jew, but he now finds himself suddenly in twenty-first century America. Has he been reincarnated? Is he a guardian angel? An encounter with a mirror reveals the terrible truth. Jacob has returned to the earth in the form of ... a house fly. Yes, Miller quite literally has a fly on the wall narrator.
The novel explores the conflict between conformity in one's culture and the desire for personal expression. Jacob had traipsed around 18th century Paris with his box of wares, always feeling an outsider in a country where he barely spoke the language and his life was governed by what he was not allowed to do. While still a teenager, he was married off to a trembling and feeble-minded little girl Hodel, who is plagued by digestive distress, all of which served to compound Jacob's woes and leads him into rebellion against his faith. Finding himself in the twenty-first century, Jacob is still fixed in his desire to undermine the faith of others. He is the devil on the shoulder, the voice whispering telling people to do what they please. He is the buzzing fly in the room, distracting his subject from their better instincts.
For my full review:
http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/review-jacobs-folly-rebecca-miller.html
I, the being in question, having spent nearly three hundred years lost as a pomegranate pip in a lake of aspic, amnesiac, bodiless and comatose, a nugget of spirit but nothing else, found myself quickening, gaining form and weight and, finally, consciousness. I did not remember dying, so my first thoughts were confused, and a little desperate.
With that, the reader is catapulted into the world of Jacob Cerf, 18th century pedlar and Jew, but he now finds himself suddenly in twenty-first century America. Has he been reincarnated? Is he a guardian angel? An encounter with a mirror reveals the terrible truth. Jacob has returned to the earth in the form of ... a house fly. Yes, Miller quite literally has a fly on the wall narrator.
The novel explores the conflict between conformity in one's culture and the desire for personal expression. Jacob had traipsed around 18th century Paris with his box of wares, always feeling an outsider in a country where he barely spoke the language and his life was governed by what he was not allowed to do. While still a teenager, he was married off to a trembling and feeble-minded little girl Hodel, who is plagued by digestive distress, all of which served to compound Jacob's woes and leads him into rebellion against his faith. Finding himself in the twenty-first century, Jacob is still fixed in his desire to undermine the faith of others. He is the devil on the shoulder, the voice whispering telling people to do what they please. He is the buzzing fly in the room, distracting his subject from their better instincts.
For my full review:
http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/review-jacobs-folly-rebecca-miller.html
bearsister's review
sick of litfic that's like "an intimate portrait of a family...they might seem good and upstanding on the outside, but it turns out they kind of resent their disabled child and the father gets horny for their kid's teacher...truly absolute clarity into the private worlds of people"
but don't worry, this one also has a narrator who spends a while describing how hard it was to rape his 14 year old wife in Paris in the 1700's.
sex isn't shocking, and neither is people being horny. it feels like such a cheap trick to try to foster intimacy between the reader and a flat character by describing their lust for random people, or like, the swiftness with which he enters his wife.
but don't worry, this one also has a narrator who spends a while describing how hard it was to rape his 14 year old wife in Paris in the 1700's.
sex isn't shocking, and neither is people being horny. it feels like such a cheap trick to try to foster intimacy between the reader and a flat character by describing their lust for random people, or like, the swiftness with which he enters his wife.
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