ISBN: 9780374178543

A luminous novel--funny and moving in equal measure--that shines with the author's unique talents "Jacob's Folly" is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book that takes on desi… Mehr…

A luminous novel--funny and moving in equal measure--that shines with the author's unique talents "Jacob's Folly" is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book that takes on desire, faith, love, acting--and reincarnation. The novel brims with sparkling, unexpected characters: Jacob, a Jewish peddler living in eighteenth-century France; Leslie and Deirdre Senzatimore, a settled American couple; Masha, an alluring young Ultra-Orthodox Jew, who is also gravely ill. In Rebecca Miller's self-assured second novel, these four individuals will find their fates intertwined when Jacob is reincarnated as a fly in contemporary Long Island. Miller's quirky humor and acute, original intelligence animate a wonderfully memorable protagonist. Through the unique lens of Jacob's consciousness, she explores transformation in all its different guises--personal, spiritual, literal. As she considers the hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, and the collision of fate and free will, Miller's world--which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit--comes to life. Leslie's desire to act as hero and rescuer; Jacob's disastrous marriage to the childlike Hodle and his obsession with Masha--Miller sketches her characters' interior lives with compassion, subtlety, and an exceptionally light touch. "Jacob's Folly" is wildly inventive and ultimately moving; it will leave the reader, no less than its characters, transformed. Jacob's Folly Miller, Rebecca, Farrar Straus Giroux<

ISBN: 0374178542

A luminous novel-funny and moving in equal measure-that shines with the author's unique talentsJacob's Folly is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book, brimful of sparkling, unexpected chara… Mehr…

A luminous novel-funny and moving in equal measure-that shines with the author's unique talentsJacob's Folly is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book, brimful of sparkling, unexpected characters, that takes on desire, faith, love, acting-and reincarnation.In eighteenth-century Paris, Jacob Cerf is a Jew, a peddler of knives, saltcellars, and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, he is determined to raise himself up in life, by whatever means he can. More than two hundred years later, Jacob is amazed to find himself reincarnated as a fly in the Long Island suburbs of twenty-first-century America, his new life twisted in ways he could never have imagined. But even the tiniest of insects can influence the turning of the world, and thanks to his arrival, the lives of a reliable volunteer fireman and a young Orthodox Jewish woman nursing a secret ambition will never be the same. Through the unique lens of Jacob's consciousness, Rebecca Miller explores change in all its different guises-personal, spiritual, literal. The hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, the collision of fate and free will: Miller's world-which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit-comes brilliantly to life in the pages of this profoundly original novel. genre fiction,historical,literary,literature and fiction Literature & Fiction, Farrar, Straus and Giroux<