The Ministry of Special Cases

Sarah Weinman has a nice review of a book that caught my eye back when BookForum reviewed it a couple months ago.

The Ministry of Special Cases appears to echo Roth’s own gambit in moving away from direct Ashkenazi Jewish experience toward something broader. Where Roth, with Letting Go, attempted to write the great campus novel, Englander here seeks to comment on the effect of Argentina’s dirty war as filtered through its Jewish community. In both cases, the approach is ambitious and wide-ranging. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, Englander’s maiden novel may wind up being viewed the same way as Roth’s has been: as a transitional work by a writer finally in sync with his natural voice.