A review by wordnerdy
The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander

3.0

This novel, about a Jewish family in Argentina during all the crappy political unrest of the 1970s, has been garnering a ton of rave reviews. I was all excited to read it . . . and then I couldn't get into it at all. Seriously, it starts all in media res going on about Jewish cemetaries and things. It did pick up after that, but just as I'd get into it, it would start to drag again. And we're talking about a story involving the disappeared! But the problem is, there's so much bureaucracy and corruption in the book . . . it's easy to feel the frustration of the protagonists, b/c I as a reader was frustrated reading it. The ending was appropriate but I just can't give this book above a B.