A review by theliteraryhooker
A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman

3.0

While I liked the idea of this novel, I wasn't a huge fan of the novel itself. The central premise (a young Jewish immigrant trying to distance himself from his community to make a name for himself, only to be pulled back in by his smooth-talking quasi-con man of a grandfather in order to forge restitution claims) is interesting and definitely a different spin than you usually get with WWII(ish) novels. But there was just way too much going on. I didn't care at all about the weird sort of but not really love triangle between Slava, Arianne and Vera. I didn't care about his crappy magazine job that he was failing at. The discovery of the forgeries was just so cobbled together. The writing was good, but not good enough to make up for how much stuff was just randomly thrown into the story to fill it out. It just wasn't a satisfying read for me.