PositiveThe Mookse and the GripesRivers, in the narrator’s account, can be both benign and scenic but also threatening and hostile ... and they denote both boundaries but also a strong pull to their destiny, the sea ... The story she tells of East London is a disconcerting one. She focuses on the local eccentrics, on the community of observant Jews (the area contains the largest concentration of Haredi Jews in Europe), itinerant Eastern Europeans, others packed into squalid and dangerous housing, travelers in their caravans ... At times the narration stretches to the deliberate absurd ... there is a definite Sebaldian feel to the narration, albeit without his detours into learned discourse ... Overall a strange and unsettling novel, if (much as it pains me to say it) a little too long, and with beautiful prose, thanks in no part to the three translators whose influence was brought to bear—the translator, the author and her husband.
