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- GenresFiction
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
2 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Yoel Hoffmann
27听books34听followersYoel Hoffmann (23 June 1937鈥� 25 August 2023) was an Israeli Jewish contemporary author, editor, scholar and translator.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 13, 2013
My Uncle Herbert was a fat mystic (when he played on his harpsichord jackals and wild dogs howled. He made the glowworms dance). But he didn't leave behind even one explicit sentence. Of the philosophic essay he was writing (he had given it the title "If the world changes- what will become of the laws?") there survived only the first twelve words: "Let us imagine a slice of sausage lying on white keys...."
There are no reviews of The Christ of Fish on goodreads.
I 听had an image of myself as a heroine of book review type places. That would never happen. Maybe a concerned citizen of the reading world. I'm the sole reviewer of other books and there's a tail of injustice pursuing my conscience. I didn't even mention.... I'm probably going to feel bad about this later.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... Okay, I made it to 28 what the tin says are vignettes and some might call poetic reveries. I call it a when people are bored and fill the empty space with the first thought before they took the time to think it out. Sometimes this is wonderful, you can surprise yourself. Sometimes it is a cab driver telling you about vacuuming on weed. The longest fifteen minutes of the year. Twenty-eight unthoughts before I had mirages of books less cutesy and cloying than this. Maybe it is better in Hebrew. I don't mean that. That is responsible book reviewer talking. As it stands, I'm hearing a woman who speaks in baby talk. You ever hear girls do this? I swear they must have forgotten how to use their real voices some day after they became who they thought some guy wanted them to be. This makes them no one I want to know. There are more interesting voices. I'm being asked the "How many licks does it take to reach the center of the tootsie roll pop?" little kid trying to stump you with ridiculous questions when you're only babysitting them as a favor to their mom and really don't need this shit right now. I wouldn't have known it was an old woman and her girlhood past at all if the book jacket didn't say so. I can't take any more contextless cutesy fartsy dreams. Maybe I would have found someone I wanted to know but I'm lying. I would concentrate very hard on a book until the person boring me with their dreams went away.
I did like the old man who watched fish all day. I would rather watch fish. Fish don't tell you all the time what they want you to think.听
It's probably bad to review and rate a book I couldn't finish. Have you ever been grossed out by people sitting in other people's laps? People who chew their food with their mouths open? And that food is tuna fish? And it's a religious meeting and everyone would judge you if you closed your eyes and tuned out all of the we love everyone stuff? Or a family reunion with a guy you're about to dump. If a book makes me feel all of those things it isn't for me.
December 18, 2017
Yoel Hoffman is incredible! This book is almost indescribable. Just read it.
This book has stage 4 incurable beauty. It's like he took a more 'normal' novel and cut it into jigsaw pieces and mixed them all up and hammered them back together in a very different order. And made everything brighter and more mythical.
This book has stage 4 incurable beauty. It's like he took a more 'normal' novel and cut it into jigsaw pieces and mixed them all up and hammered them back together in a very different order. And made everything brighter and more mythical.
June 20, 2023
After three books by Hoffmann in a row, more or less, I think that Hoffmann picks maybe a topic and a philosophical question for each of his books, and uses his unique style and personal history to explore them. This book is about death, and with it memory, life, rebirth, and redemption, and like all of his books, about the meaning of life and the nature of reality. I also got a hunch that perhaps they should be read as one big work, since they seem to have continuity in time and place, with "Berhardt" taking place in the 40s, this book in the 50s through the 70s, and "The Heart is Katmandu" taking place in the 80s, and all of them follow Eastern European Jews in Israel.
One of the key moments in the story is when the narrator's aunt, the main character, of sorts, of this story, decides in an act of mercy, after realizing the carp swimming in her bathtub awaiting to become the traditional Jewish dish of Gefilte Fish, has a soul as well, and sends her husband, Herbert, to "return it to the sea". The problem is, of course, that the carp is a sweetwater fish, and the sea of Tel Aviv is, alas, the salty Mediterranean. And I think that the failed shots at redemption are at the core of the book.
It's a dark book, as its subject matter, is filled with philosophical musings some of which return in other books of his, such as quantum mechanics, a dualist view of the world, the unity of the "big items" out in the universe and "the movement of purses" down here on Earth. I also felt the impact of Dadaism in some of the imagery and grotesque art.
It was not an easy read, and it's not my favorite of Hoffmann's, but it was interesting and worthwhile.
One of the key moments in the story is when the narrator's aunt, the main character, of sorts, of this story, decides in an act of mercy, after realizing the carp swimming in her bathtub awaiting to become the traditional Jewish dish of Gefilte Fish, has a soul as well, and sends her husband, Herbert, to "return it to the sea". The problem is, of course, that the carp is a sweetwater fish, and the sea of Tel Aviv is, alas, the salty Mediterranean. And I think that the failed shots at redemption are at the core of the book.
It's a dark book, as its subject matter, is filled with philosophical musings some of which return in other books of his, such as quantum mechanics, a dualist view of the world, the unity of the "big items" out in the universe and "the movement of purses" down here on Earth. I also felt the impact of Dadaism in some of the imagery and grotesque art.
It was not an easy read, and it's not my favorite of Hoffmann's, but it was interesting and worthwhile.
September 12, 2023
Great book, an excelent writer
March 1, 2016
Although my uncle, Herbert Hirsch, played the harpsichord, the ship on which he sailed for Palestine ran aground.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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