In one of the stronger stories in this much-praised first collection, a WASP character has a life transforming experience in a New York cab which leaves him feeling he has become Jewish. His equally WASP wife, the sort of woman who removes dinner from the refrigerator not the stove, is unsympathetic. "I've been waiting for your midlife crisis. But I expected something I could handle, a small test. An imposition. Something to rise above and prove my love . . . Why couldn't you have turned into a vegan? Or a liberal Democrat? Slept with your secretary for real." Elsewhere, in the title story, a man deprived of his wife's favours, announces to a cab driver, "I'm looking for a prostitute." The driver's response is reasonable. "Do I look like a prostitute?"
These stories follow in the well-established tradition of Jewish-American fiction. Some are good, a couple are very good. Englander has been likened, wrongly, to Bellow and Roth, and more accurately to Malamud, while one of the pieces, The Tumblers, in which a group of Jews awaiting deportation infiltrate a troupe of entertainers as a way of cheating death, has definite echoes of Singer.
At its heart is the weight of Jewish ritual. Some of the stories are set in Jerusalem, where Englander now lives. The generally calm response to a bomb blast causes the narrator of In This Way We Are Wise to reflect: "Jerusalemites do not spook like horses. They do not fly like moths into the fire. They have come to abide their climate. Terror as second winter, as part of their weather." It is a sombre piece, and the most personal in a book which is adroit if derivative.
"I was raised on tradition. Pictures of a hallowed Jerusalem nestled away like Eden . . . I can lead you through the alleys of the Old City, tell you a story about each one. This is my knowing. Dusty-book knowing. I thought I'd learned everything about Jerusalem, only to discover my information was very, very old." The passage also suggests Englander is well aware of his narrative limitations. He has the confidence, but he has yet to find his voice.
