The Golems of Gotham

At the beginning of Thane Rosenbaum's imaginative comedy The Golems of Gotham, an elderly pair of Holocaust survivors, Lothar and Rose Levin, commit suicide. Their son, Oliver, a successful New York mystery writer already suffering from his wife's desertion and a crippling case of writer's block, is devastated by the news. Oliver's 14-year-old daughter, Ariel, comes to the rescue, conjuring not only her grandparents from the grave but also a remarkable group of Jewish literary golems (ghosts, in this case) who also killed themselves after a lifetime of Holocaust memories. Among the visitors here to inspire Oliver toward writing a serious second novel are Primo Levi, Jerzy Kosinski, and Paul Celan. While Oliver writes feverishly, the ghosts cleanse New York City of any reminders of oppression toward Jews: tattoos, crew cuts, overcrowded trains, striped uniforms, and smoke belching from tall stacks.

The Golems of Gotham is quick-witted and a lot of fun, but there comes a point at which the reader might reasonably wonder whether this material is going to lead somewhere. It's one thing to drag Levi and the other golems (including Jean Amery, Piotr Rawicz, and Tadeusz Borowski) into a self-serving comedy, but to do so in a story context that invites, but doesn't deliver, contemplation about the relationship between art and memory is wasteful. --Tom Keogh


Genre: Fantasy