Nathan Englander is an exceptional writer, and I have read and loved his short story collections. This is my first crack at a novel, and in future I think I will stick the the stories.

Kaddish.com starts out great. Our "hero" whom we first meet as "Larry" is a lapsed ultraorthodox Jew. By the measure of those in the fundamentalist sect that makes him an infidel. The book begins at shiva for Larry's beloved father. The shiva, in his sister's home, is torture for Larry who has become a branding consultant with a Clinton Hill co-op and a notable weed and internet porn habit. (I ask this as a nice Jewish girl, what is it with Jewish male writers and graphic and seriously disturbing masturbation scenes? Englander often gets compared to Philip Roth, and I believe it is because readers get exactly the same wildly uncomfortable feeling reading their respective creepy self-gratification scenes. Until very recently I thought Jonathan Franzen was Jewish, something I assumed largely because of the obligatory off-putting wank scenes in all of his books.) The shiva portion of the book reads like a perfect short story. It is really very good. And then suddenly it is several years later and Larry has returned to his Jewish name, Shuli, and is working in a Yeshiva.

In the second part of the book Larry/Shuli has acquired a wife and children and has renounced internet access. (Sadly for the reader he still thinks a lot about the porn he did watch.) In this life, where he appears content, he has a crisis brought on by guilt for something he did in his Larry days, and hijinks ensue as he tries to put things right. With some modification this second part of the book, particularly the part about Shuli's relationship to a Yeshiva boy who is a bit of a renegade, might also work as a short story. As it stands, it is like there are two largely unrelated stories and we are supposed to see it as a novel. We have no idea how Larry becomes Shuli (and given the conversion and reversion it would help to understand how Shuli became Larry in the first place), why he has chosen to return to this life, how he acquired this ever patient wife (the reader can decide if she is a saint or an enabler), why he suddenly feels the need to repent. It is a bizarre time warp and it does not work at all. Englander is asking some pretty profound questions in this comic novel but it all gets lost under the weight of the "why is this happening and why should I care" questions, and the many references to glass dildoes. So much potential and such a mess.

One more issue -- this is replete with AP level Jewish stuff, and Englander provides no context or explanations. I am a Reform Jew and a lot of what goes on here is not anything I learned coming up. Luckily, I have a fascination with fundamentalist cults in general, and an extra bit of interest in those that spring from my own faith, so I know this stuff, but I suspect there is a lot here that would be foreign most Jews and even more baffling so to non-Jews. I can imagine a lot of people stumbling over the tefillin and tzitzits and phylacteries and Kiddush cups, but more important over the central theme -- why is Kaddish such a big deal? This is always a question -- should writers provide information about the lives and practices of their characters so the reader can understand the story, or is it up the reader to do the work? For me, I think a little information is a great thing, enough that the reader has a basic grasp of what is happening and enough that she knows where to start to do her own research to learn more if she so chooses.

This was a 2.5 for me. Really it is eminently skippable. ( )

Thank you to Lithub for this win.

It took me 2 years to get to this book and now I'm like what did I just read. I guess I didn't read the plot well enough since this is not what I expected that's for sure. A totally different type of read but held my interest enough to finish it in hours.

Even though I'm Jewish I learned a lot of new Hebrew words and I needed a glossary for a lot of them. ( )

See my review in Rain Taxi Review of Books: http://www.raintaxi.com/volume-24-number-4-winter-2019-96/ ( )

Larry is having a difficult time sitting Shiva in his sister's Memphis home for their father. He grieves the loss of his father. And feels uncomfortable that the Shiva callers are looking at him judgmentally because he left the fold of orthodoxy. When his sister and her rabbi tell him he must say kaddish (the prayer for the dead) every day for a year, he refuses. But he suggests a religiously acceptable alternative plan.

And so begins a seriously humorous adventure into one man's efforts to make amends through repentance, spirituality, love and oh yeah, some technology.

I really couldn't stand the whining in the first chapter and was going to stop reading and move on. So glad I continued because it improved dramatically.

Kaddish.com is a smart, thoughtful, introspective, kind and loving book.

A good short story - - an easy long afternoon read - - but just a little too predictable. ( )