In the most compelling of these, a golem who appears in Puttermesser's bed helps her become mayor of a city turned Edenlike under her guardianship. The subways grow beautiful and safe. Former thugs put on clean shirts and dance in Central Park. No one steals. Welfare is obsolete.
Men tip their hats.
The golem gets out of hand. No longer mayor, Puttermesser embarks on an affair that largely consists of reading George Eliot aloud. The end, when it comes, is a total surprise, more proof of a prize-winner's daring. Like a misstuffed kishke, the action swells out, tapers off, swells out and tapers off here and there, presenting separate dramas whose only connection to one another is that they happen to Puttermesser. In that sense the book reads like a true biography, which is what Ozick intended.