Songs for the Butcher's Daughter

I am a secular Jew. Like myself, this novel is far more ethnic than religious. It's incredibly Jewish, but at the same time wonderfully inclusive. What I mean is, you do NOT have to be Jewish to read and enjoy this novel. In fact, it is a tale literally being told by an outsider. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a story within a story. On the surface, it is the fictionalized autobiography of Itsik Malpesh, "the last... Read Full Review

There are as many ways to understand and appreciate this book as there are readers because we hear other people's stories in the language and context that we have grown up with. At one point Itsik says "How is it that we are to others what we are not to yourselves? Does a word know its own meaning? Does a letter know the sound that it signifies? How then can we pretend to know what our lives are for?" We shape and are... Read Full Review

I fell in love with "Songs for the Butcher's daughter" from the very beginning. This book turned out to contain everything I wish for in a good novel: love of books, the intellectual pursuit, a love story, a picaresque memoir, all written in a great, rich prose by the author who obviously has a lot of background knowledge about the subject he chose. The narrator, a Catholic young man from Boston, who has just graduated from... Read Full Review