A review by anna_hepworth
The Wizardry of Jewish Women by Gillian Polack
5.0
Difficult to get in to at the start, partly because the story starts rather abruptly, slowly fleshing out the characters and their relationships instead of spelling them out up front, and partly because there are some fairly intense aspects that I had to walk away from, interrupting the flow of the story.
Once I got in to it, this story of the somewhat ordinary lives of supposedly ordinary people galumphed along at quite a rate. I did find some of the later plot details a little forced, but my guess is that for each of the really weird 'real world' plot elements, someone I know can tell a story that roughly matches that -- that life is weirder than the things that are credible in fiction (and it seems weird, that in an urban magical story, it is some of the more 'real world' details seemed too far out there).
For some, the ending will be unsatisfying -- many of the story threads don't resolve, in the same way that they did not start abruptly at the beginning of the story -- there is less a resounding finish than a gradual fade to black as the characters move away from the view of the writer.
Disclaimer: Gillian is a friend. While I don't think the fact that I heard the book read in her voice changed the way I related to it, knowledge of her politics and views on a number of topics gave the book a greater resonance that I might have expected without that background.
Once I got in to it, this story of the somewhat ordinary lives of supposedly ordinary people galumphed along at quite a rate. I did find some of the later plot details a little forced, but my guess is that for each of the really weird 'real world' plot elements, someone I know can tell a story that roughly matches that -- that life is weirder than the things that are credible in fiction (and it seems weird, that in an urban magical story, it is some of the more 'real world' details seemed too far out there).
For some, the ending will be unsatisfying -- many of the story threads don't resolve, in the same way that they did not start abruptly at the beginning of the story -- there is less a resounding finish than a gradual fade to black as the characters move away from the view of the writer.
Disclaimer: Gillian is a friend. While I don't think the fact that I heard the book read in her voice changed the way I related to it, knowledge of her politics and views on a number of topics gave the book a greater resonance that I might have expected without that background.