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The Angel of Forgetfulness
In a trilogy of connected stories that revolve around an unfinished manuscript and a fallen angel's relationship with his half-mortal son in 1900 New York, three people depart from their ordinary lives in the wake of a series of extraordinary adventures. By the award-winning author of The Wedding Jester. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
3 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
About the author
Steve Stern
29 books66 followersStern was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1947, the son of a grocer. He left Memphis in the 1960s to attend college, then to travel the US and Europe — living, as he told one interviewer, "the wayward life of my generation for about a decade," and ending on a hippie commune in the Ozarks. He went on to study writing in the graduate program at the University of Arkansas, at a time when it included several notable writers who've since become prominent, including poet C.D. Wright and fiction writers Ellen Gilchrist, Lewis Nordan, Lee K. Abbott and Jack Butler.
Stern subsequently moved to London, England, before returning to Memphis in his thirties to accept a job at a local folklore center. There he learned about the city's old Jewish ghetto, The Pinch, and began to steep himself in Yiddish folklore. He published his first book, the story collection Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, which was based in The Pinch, in 1983. It won the Pushcart Writers' Choice Award and acclaim from some notable critics, including Susan Sontag, who praised the book's "brio ... whiplash sentences ... energy and charm," and observed that "Steve Stern may be a late practitioner of the genre [Yiddish folklore], but he is an expert one."
By decade's end Stern had won the O. Henry Award, two Pushcart Prize awards, published more collections, including Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction) and the novel Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground, and was being hailed by critics such as Cynthia Ozick as the successor to Isaac Bashevis Singer. Stern's 2000 collection The Wedding Jester won the National Jewish Book Award, and his novel The Angel of Forgetfulness was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post.
Stern, who teaches at Skidmore College, has also won some notable scholarly awards, including fellowships from the Fulbright and the Guggenheim foundations. He currently lives in Ballston Spa, New York, and his latest work, the novel The Frozen Rabbi, was published in 2010.
Stern subsequently moved to London, England, before returning to Memphis in his thirties to accept a job at a local folklore center. There he learned about the city's old Jewish ghetto, The Pinch, and began to steep himself in Yiddish folklore. He published his first book, the story collection Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, which was based in The Pinch, in 1983. It won the Pushcart Writers' Choice Award and acclaim from some notable critics, including Susan Sontag, who praised the book's "brio ... whiplash sentences ... energy and charm," and observed that "Steve Stern may be a late practitioner of the genre [Yiddish folklore], but he is an expert one."
By decade's end Stern had won the O. Henry Award, two Pushcart Prize awards, published more collections, including Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction) and the novel Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground, and was being hailed by critics such as Cynthia Ozick as the successor to Isaac Bashevis Singer. Stern's 2000 collection The Wedding Jester won the National Jewish Book Award, and his novel The Angel of Forgetfulness was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post.
Stern, who teaches at Skidmore College, has also won some notable scholarly awards, including fellowships from the Fulbright and the Guggenheim foundations. He currently lives in Ballston Spa, New York, and his latest work, the novel The Frozen Rabbi, was published in 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 7, 2020
Maybe we need more angels? This book deals with angels, souls, penance, addictions, reincarnation and mysteries that we cannot easily know. It has several main characters (Saul, Nachman, Nathan, Keni, Sofia, Rivka, Miranda) who speak from different geographies and from different decades and from different cultures. The main character is a wayward angel, Mocky, who has a half-human son who gets stuck. Mocky is doing atonement for abandoning his son and maybe for siring him?
The ending was only one short page which was too abrupt and too late for me, and I should have read it and meditated on it first. I liked this book a lot, but I need to read it again because I think I missed some connections the first time around. I also want to re-read to verify the connection between the angel's Hebrew name of Mocky (scourge, plague, disease, suffering, sorrow, pain) with the regular angel of forgetfulness who puts the cleft between the upper lip and the nose. Maybe the death angel needs to tap another cleft to make us forget our earthly pleasures?
Another good reason to re-read is the masterful and the artful use of language. The vocabulary is magnificent. Many individual paragraphs are works of art. The holy bible and Yiddish phrases and time travel flavor the book. Many erudite literary names and references also give it flavor.
So here's part of that last page where Mocky speaks:
The ending was only one short page which was too abrupt and too late for me, and I should have read it and meditated on it first. I liked this book a lot, but I need to read it again because I think I missed some connections the first time around. I also want to re-read to verify the connection between the angel's Hebrew name of Mocky (scourge, plague, disease, suffering, sorrow, pain) with the regular angel of forgetfulness who puts the cleft between the upper lip and the nose. Maybe the death angel needs to tap another cleft to make us forget our earthly pleasures?
Another good reason to re-read is the masterful and the artful use of language. The vocabulary is magnificent. Many individual paragraphs are works of art. The holy bible and Yiddish phrases and time travel flavor the book. Many erudite literary names and references also give it flavor.
So here's part of that last page where Mocky speaks:
March 13, 2011
The Angel of Forgetfulness by Steve Stern was one of those long-term wishlist books. It was on there long enough for me to forget the reason behind it's inclusion.
The plot synopsis certainly sounded promising: a struggling writer inherits the tattered, unfinished manuscript from his aunt. Saul must delve deep into his aunt's history in order to finish the book. Along the way he uncovers a romance between his aunt and a fallen angel.
Unfortunately the plot is tied up in an unnecessarily complicated narration. First there are numerous flashbacks, stacked up like matroyska dolls. Each flashback has its own point of view told with a rambling prose. Missing though are the well-needed segues and hooks to help the reader navigate through the scenes.
That said, I know the book won't stick with me. I guess my "forgetfulness" is truth in advertising on the part of the book's title.
The plot synopsis certainly sounded promising: a struggling writer inherits the tattered, unfinished manuscript from his aunt. Saul must delve deep into his aunt's history in order to finish the book. Along the way he uncovers a romance between his aunt and a fallen angel.
Unfortunately the plot is tied up in an unnecessarily complicated narration. First there are numerous flashbacks, stacked up like matroyska dolls. Each flashback has its own point of view told with a rambling prose. Missing though are the well-needed segues and hooks to help the reader navigate through the scenes.
That said, I know the book won't stick with me. I guess my "forgetfulness" is truth in advertising on the part of the book's title.
July 25, 2014
Steve Stern is a genius. I previously raved about how hilarious and well-written I thought The Frozen Rabbi was. This is not the same kind of read. It's more challenging, but even more rewarding. It's a complex layering of three interlinked stories, one set in the early 1900's Lower East Side teeming with gangsters and flophouses, the other in the 1970's, featuring a young man's drug-addled odyssey--both involving the telling of a third story about a fallen angel. Ultimately it's about the human condition, but if you have interest in immigrant literature, yiddish literature, coming-of-age stories, books about books, magic realism, or writing so brilliant you will marvel at every page--it's for you.
January 12, 2013
So I have been lucky with the books I have randomly chosen this year and this is no exception. I really enjoyed this book. It is a fun trip through 3 stories that are not just intermingled by theme but by author, generation, and spirit. There is a great cultural tradition in the book I learned about and could try to tap into, as well as history I enjoyed in New York's LES immigrant population. Definitely worth picking up.
Read
February 15, 2009This has got to be my choice for favorite read of 2008. It called to me from a remainder shelf in my bookstore READ ME! Yiddish folklore, turn of century New York, Father/Son action, sex, one lost soul who eventually finds himself. Huzzah to Steve Stern for giving us this place to go
Read
November 20, 2019I see the cover praising it, and I start out enjoying the rich description of a culture, and a fantastic premise, but................it wears on me, and I come to dislike all the characters, intensely, and just at the end a hope that it will reclaim mt interest, but no. I don't like it, though it was a fine premise.
May 5, 2018
This is an incredible piece. I may have to upgrade the rating.
Maybe it’s the Saul chapters with the hippies that drag and keep this book from being a pure winner, but I generally love the story and the language. The wit had me laughing in wonder frequently.
Maybe it’s the Saul chapters with the hippies that drag and keep this book from being a pure winner, but I generally love the story and the language. The wit had me laughing in wonder frequently.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 17, 2019
Have never read such a grimy, greasy, ugly semi-fantasy, written apparently by some sort of self-hating Jew similar perhaps to the early Phillip Roth. Yech
April 18, 2010
...then I'll remind him that on earth everyone's a skeptic, whereas in heaven they'll believe anything."
Ever read a book and when you finished, you weren't sure what the hell you just read?
Well I'm totally there.
The story rotates around three different speakers: Saul, Nathan, Mocky. Saul a student in NY, who goes into this bohemian lifestyle for a while aftet the death of his "Aunt' Keni. Nathan, who lived decades earlier in NY who was a poor editor; he had an affair with Keni (must have married her later, though that isn't told in his story) who wrote "The Angel of Forgetfulness." Finally Mocky, the fallen angel in Nathan's tale who has a half-human, half-angelic child Nachman. Now Nathan sometimes assumes the role of Nachman (I have a feeling his isn't screwed in all that tight). And Nathan and Saul may or not be incarnations of Nachman until he can return to Heaven.
More sex, murder/suicide, hash smoking, golums, and angels than you can shake a stick at...
Now another thing that got me was, (however slight in blood content) I do have Jewish ancestory and I am used to Yiddish and Yinglish and hilariously inverted word order. But there were a lot of phrases that I had no idea, nor did Stern offer up any translation. Also you couldn't figure it out by context clues. So after pausing to look up a word or two i called it quits with the googling and read on. Also Stern obviously is a human thesarus. I ran across a couple of words I didn't recongize (high SAT score in English nonwithstanding.)
Knowing a little bit about Judaism definately helps with this book. So thank goodness for the intro class I took in undergrad.
Ever read a book and when you finished, you weren't sure what the hell you just read?
Well I'm totally there.
The story rotates around three different speakers: Saul, Nathan, Mocky. Saul a student in NY, who goes into this bohemian lifestyle for a while aftet the death of his "Aunt' Keni. Nathan, who lived decades earlier in NY who was a poor editor; he had an affair with Keni (must have married her later, though that isn't told in his story) who wrote "The Angel of Forgetfulness." Finally Mocky, the fallen angel in Nathan's tale who has a half-human, half-angelic child Nachman. Now Nathan sometimes assumes the role of Nachman (I have a feeling his isn't screwed in all that tight). And Nathan and Saul may or not be incarnations of Nachman until he can return to Heaven.
More sex, murder/suicide, hash smoking, golums, and angels than you can shake a stick at...
Now another thing that got me was, (however slight in blood content) I do have Jewish ancestory and I am used to Yiddish and Yinglish and hilariously inverted word order. But there were a lot of phrases that I had no idea, nor did Stern offer up any translation. Also you couldn't figure it out by context clues. So after pausing to look up a word or two i called it quits with the googling and read on. Also Stern obviously is a human thesarus. I ran across a couple of words I didn't recongize (high SAT score in English nonwithstanding.)
Knowing a little bit about Judaism definately helps with this book. So thank goodness for the intro class I took in undergrad.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 29, 2009
This is a charmingly ludicrous story about three fellows hopping through time and one of them is an angel.
This is another one of my "beautiful and weird" books. Technically it would be classified as "magical realism," but I can't really think of too many works of fiction that aren't. From a certain standpoint.
It also seems to be another one of my "Sweet and Jewish" books. I appear to have a lot of those. From The Yiddish Policeman’s Union to Everything is Illuminated and A Plague of Dreamers; maybe it's an accident, maybe it's a subconscious thing brought on by my late childhood when I started theatre and was the only non-Jewish kid anywhere to be seen. Believe me, by the time I was fifteen I would have given almost anything to trade lives with Ingrid Levi, the most popular girl I knew there.
Never mind.
So: The Angel of Forgetfulness is a well written book with a funny, sweet, interesting story in it. I would recommend it, but only to people who are in to that sort of thing.
This is another one of my "beautiful and weird" books. Technically it would be classified as "magical realism," but I can't really think of too many works of fiction that aren't. From a certain standpoint.
It also seems to be another one of my "Sweet and Jewish" books. I appear to have a lot of those. From The Yiddish Policeman’s Union to Everything is Illuminated and A Plague of Dreamers; maybe it's an accident, maybe it's a subconscious thing brought on by my late childhood when I started theatre and was the only non-Jewish kid anywhere to be seen. Believe me, by the time I was fifteen I would have given almost anything to trade lives with Ingrid Levi, the most popular girl I knew there.
Never mind.
So: The Angel of Forgetfulness is a well written book with a funny, sweet, interesting story in it. I would recommend it, but only to people who are in to that sort of thing.
June 16, 2011
Meh. It had some enjoyable moments, and some of the Yinglish made me laugh out loud.
But as I approached the end I found I didn't care what happened to any of the characters.
Occasionally I got frustrated with the layers of story-about-a-story-about-a-story. Sometimes it was the rambling on about Yiddish scholarship. Other times it was the Yiddish words that were not explained and couldn't be inferred from context.
At one point I wondered if the book was a series of exercises in writing techniques, because I kept getting the sense of "Oh yeah, then what happened?" and then losing it again.
I liked "The Frozen Rabbi" better.
But as I approached the end I found I didn't care what happened to any of the characters.
Occasionally I got frustrated with the layers of story-about-a-story-about-a-story. Sometimes it was the rambling on about Yiddish scholarship. Other times it was the Yiddish words that were not explained and couldn't be inferred from context.
At one point I wondered if the book was a series of exercises in writing techniques, because I kept getting the sense of "Oh yeah, then what happened?" and then losing it again.
I liked "The Frozen Rabbi" better.
August 14, 2008
Three intertwined stories- 1920's Lower East Side immigrant life, 1960's commune farm life, and a magical realism Jewish mystical angel story.
The folksy cover (painted by Brad Holland) led me to think that the immigrant stories and the angel stories would be in the forefront, but in fact the sixties hippie commune life takes over and that was my favorite aspect.
These days, the lower east side has hippie ghosts as well as Jewish immigrant ghosts- nice to see a book that channels them both.
The folksy cover (painted by Brad Holland) led me to think that the immigrant stories and the angel stories would be in the forefront, but in fact the sixties hippie commune life takes over and that was my favorite aspect.
These days, the lower east side has hippie ghosts as well as Jewish immigrant ghosts- nice to see a book that channels them both.
May 26, 2008
The strangest thing... this was an enjoyable book comprised of three intersecting stories concerning a fallen angel across the ages.
About 75 pages from the finish I realized that if I lost the book I wouldn't care about finding out what ultimately happens with the story. So I quit reading it.
That's never happened before... strange.
About 75 pages from the finish I realized that if I lost the book I wouldn't care about finding out what ultimately happens with the story. So I quit reading it.
That's never happened before... strange.
March 28, 2011
really a 3.5 but a wonderful dark comic story within a story within a story, complicated flawed ecentric characters, all carrying out the same destiny. warning: it's helpful to know yiddish, but not essential to enjoy this somewhat shaggy dog story.
November 25, 2007
More like Yiddish Theater meet magical realism. Didn't work for me...
October 4, 2010
I liked Stern's book The Frozen Rabbi but didn't like this one.
July 21, 2011
practically unreadable.
May 23, 2011
I read this last year and I honestly can't remember if I finished it. I remember many parts of it, but not the end. That's why it got 2 stars.
July 21, 2011
This was the first book I didn't finish. When I don't like a book I normally finish it. I made to page 117.
December 23, 2011
I couldn't get into caring about the characters enough to finish reading this one. Sorry!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews