Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories

About: A collection of 11 stories by Nobel Prize–winning author, translated from the original Yiddish.

Verdict: Much as Singer’s tortured souls are burdened by misery, so I endured torment plodding through this collection. The stories can start well, with an appealing, almost fairy-tale like simplicity ("I am from Turbin, and there we had a wife killer"), but they offer no resolution, merely bury readers in the characters’ wretched circumstances: in short, people suffer, and they continue to suffer, until, by and large, they die miserable deaths. The end.

Publication: 1957 · 173 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars