Shadows on the Hudson
Although Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1935, the circumscribed  world of the Polish Jews remained at the heart of his imagination. Beginning with his first major work,Satan in Goray(1935), he used the life of theshtetlas raw material, transforming its folkways, religious practices, superstitions, and  sexual habits into superior works of art. From time to time, however, Singer turned his eye upon New World Jews like  himself, recording their rapid or reluctant assimilation into the American mainstream. One such book isShadows on  the Hudson.This massive novel originally was serialized in the Yiddish-languageJewish Daily Forwardin 1957. Now it has  finally been translated into English--in a capable version by Joseph Sherman--and Singer fans should be very grateful.  Center stage is occupied by Boris Makaver, a master builder equally devoted to I-beams and the Talmud, and Anna, his  much-married daughter. Fanning out from this duo, however, is a small universe of refugees, all of them served up with  Singer's customary brio. (Here's a comical snapshot of a shyster named Hertz Grein: "His nose had a Jewish hook, but then had second  thoughts and straightened itself out. His lips were thin, and his blue eyes revealed a curious mixture of bashfulness,  sharpness, and something else that was hard to define. Margolin used to say that he looked like a Yeshiva boy from  Scandinavia.") As the subplots pile up in an unruly heap, the novel sometimes reveals its installment-plan origins. Still, Singer puts his  large cast through some wonderful paces, and the endless talk--for these are characters who truly come alive through  the medium of rapid, contentious, Yiddish-accented conversation--allows the author to speculate about destiny,  identity, and freedom without slowing his story a whit. As Singer said more than once, "Of course I believe in  free will. Do we have a choice?"--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.