Jacob's Folly

“Bravura storytelling . . . Fantastic.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Droll, racy, and occasionally cutting...this is an imaginative leap in new direction, yolking historical fiction to a contemporary drama . . . Delightful.”—Los Angeles Times

“Miller has the soaring eye of the epicist and the sly instinct of the satirist.”—The New Yorker

“A feat of extraordinary imagination . . . Sexy [and] unapologetically lyrical.”—VanityFair.com

“An ingenious, meticulously observed, profoundly absorbing, and deeply satisfying read.”—USA Today

“Marvelous, deep, rich, sexy, transgressive, terrifying, tough, and very, very funny—a great ingathering as multifaceted as a gem, or the eye of a fly!”—Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America

A challenging read, yet remarkably entertaining and ultimately gripping.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Miller embeds readers in the outsized consciousness of a fly, the modern reincarnation of Jacob, a Jewish peddler taken from eighteenth-century Paris and stripped of his identity. Via an enigmatic capacity to enter minds, the fly encourages young, Orthodox Masha's forbidden stage aspirations while simultaneously inciting a botched bid to ‘rescue' her. Because of consistent narration, Miller's intricate plots are never confusing. Rather, they are foils across time and space, offering measurements of survival, belonging, inheritance, the cost of transformation—whether coerced or voluntary—and outcome's overpowering of intention. Jacob acts undetected by his targets, but a far more inscrutable figure reveals his role in the satisfying conclusion. The novel breathes sensuality, creating sounds of languages mixing in dusty streets, the feeling of being bareheaded, without yarmulke, for the first time, and even an orange's distinctive smell. Readers will chuckle contentedly and without malice at a violent, life-affirming death. A deeply pleasurable, darkly comic, and original reinterpretation of Jewish history's ‘indestructible storyline,' alighting thoughtfully on forces both individual and collective, internal and external, from genocide to assimilation.”—Cynthia-Marie O'Brien, Booklist (starred review)

“Scads of narrative threads are sewn together with impressive and often lovely wordplay to form a vast historical fabric of Jacob's Jewish family. Miller . . . is so clever when dwelling in the mind and body of that insect that the reader is rarely exasperated. An unusual and absorbing read.”—Publishers Weekly