Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: I just finished reading "The Last Jew" and loved every word of it. The way Gordon describes people and places - reading it you feel yourself placed back in time in Spain during the Inquisition. I loved the mixture of drama and history and my heart went out to Yonah (the main character) as he had to leave his home after his family is killed. He has to find a new life in Spain where Jews are sought after and killed for being Jewish. He maintains a Jew throughout his life as a shepherd, an armourer and finally finds his destiny as the physician of Saragossa. If you love historian novels - here's one you've got to have!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: I just finished reading "The Last Jew" and loved every word of it. The way Gordon describes people and places - reading it you feel yourself placed back in time in Spain during the Inquisition. I loved the mixture of drama and history and my heart went out to Yonah (the main character) as he had to leave his home after his family is killed. He has to find a new life in Spain where Jews are sought after and killed for being Jewish. He maintains a Jew throughout his life as a shepherd, an armourer and finally finds his destiny as the physician of Saragossa. If you love historian novels - here's one you've got to have!
Rating: 
Summary: No "Name of the Rose"
Review: I was on my way home from Spain and this book seemed the perfect coronation to my trip. I was hoping to savour a little longer the beautiful cities of Seville and Granada and truly learn about the reachest era in Spanish history...what a disappointment.I had to endure 375 pages of depressing writing, detailing the daily nurishment and whereabouts of a guy, not heroic or deep, whose life always come to a inexplicable good cycle solving everything. I think this could be offensive for a true historian.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing new
Review: If you have read "the Physician" of the same author, then don't bother with this one. It is the same thing in a different place and diferent time. But the author don't exploit at all the fact of setting the novel in one of the most tragic events in Spanish history. The result is a shallow book. Try to find and read "El puente de Alcantara" (Alcantara bridge) Of Frank Baer, and you find out what i mean
Rating: 
Summary: Anticlimax
Review: Noah Gordon amazed us back in the mid-80s when he released his masterpiece "The physician". The problem is, after that he was never the same writer again. "Shaman" was fairly good, "The Jerusalem diamond" and "The death comitee" were mildly interesting and "The rabbi" and "Matters of choice" were almost unreadable. "The last jew" is not that bad, but not nearly as good as "The Physician". The last jew in Spain is Yonah Toledano, living in a time when all jews are to leave the country or become conversos, otherwise they will suffer the tortures of the infamed Inquisition. Yonah's family is scattered early in the book, and he finds himself alone wandering through Spain, pretending to be an old catholic, but never forgetting his jewish background. The story could be interesting. But there's a grave problem with it: it never reaches a climax. There's no conclusion. Gordon has created a plain and constant book, and that's really bad when dealing with fiction. Yonah Toledano is the main character, and he's developed enough, but all other characters simply enter and leave the book with almost no further consequences. So, in the end, while I found "The last jew" a pleasant reading, I also thought it was a futile one. I hope Gordon's next book will be somewhat improved in style, plot and characters. Like "The physician" was. Grade 6.4/10
Rating: 
Summary: The Last Jew
Review: Noah Gordon has gained a new reader. THE LAST JEW is the first of his books I have read, but I have already ordered three more. His historical research is flawless, as is his ability to keep the reader interested and turning pages, even when telling about mundane matters. I would recommend this title to anyone who enjoys well-written and well-researched historical fiction. Mr. Gordon's grasp of facts and his ability to make the reader feel the experience are on a level with Anne Perry and her Victorian mysteries and Diana Gabaldon's novels.
Rating:
Summary: Historical fiction about the dark days of the Inquisition.
Review: Noah Gordon's "The Last Jew" describes the wrenching experience of the Jewish communities in Spain and Portugal who suffered horribly during the infamous Inquisition. As the book opens in 1489, the Toledano family, famous for its expertise in metalworking, is central to the story. Meir, one of the Toledano sons, is found dead in the process of delivering a sacred silver and gold object to a priest, and his death leads to an investigation which has far ranging implications for Jews and Catholics alike. Subsequently, Yonah Toledano, Meir's brother, suffers through the death and expulsion of his fellow Jews as the Inquisition heats up. He decides not to flee Spain, nor does he undergo a false conversion to Catholicism as so many others do. He travels the country pretending to be an "Old Christian" and he silently mouths the Jewish prayers that he remembers from his youth. "The Lost Jew" is a "road story" as Yonah wanders from place to place, taking up migrant labor, work in an armory and medicine. He befriends a number of people, including women, as he tries to find a purpose in life. At the back of his mind, he wants to take revenge on those who killed his brother. Unfortunately, the novel loses its way for several reasons. Yonah's character remains a cipher. He seems to care about Judaism occasionally, but most of the time he scarcely gives it a thought. He seems a little too nimble with everything that comes his way. He is equally adept at forging steel and performing surgery! The book does not have a strong central theme that carries it along. It meanders along slowly with Yonah as he travels from place to place, and the large cast of characters tends to become confusing after a while. It is also too coincidental that Yonah keeps meeting up with people that he knew as a youth. Too many coincidences weaken a book. I am very interesting in this tragic period of Jewish history, but, for all of his meticulous research, Gordon did not put together a particularly compelling story.
Rating:
Summary: Historical fiction about the dark days of the Inquisition.
Review: Noah Gordon's "The Last Jew" describes the wrenching experience of the Jewish communities in Spain and Portugal who suffered horribly during the infamous Inquisition. As the book opens in 1489, the Toledano family, famous for its expertise in metalworking, is central to the story. Meir, one of the Toledano sons, is found dead in the process of delivering a sacred silver and gold object to a priest, and his death leads to an investigation which has far ranging implications for Jews and Catholics alike. Subsequently, Yonah Toledano, Meir's brother, suffers through the death and expulsion of his fellow Jews as the Inquisition heats up. He decides not to flee Spain, nor does he undergo a false conversion to Catholicism as so many others do. He travels the country pretending to be an "Old Christian" and he silently mouths the Jewish prayers that he remembers from his youth. "The Lost Jew" is a "road story" as Yonah wanders from place to place, taking up migrant labor, work in an armory and medicine. He befriends a number of people, including women, as he tries to find a purpose in life. At the back of his mind, he wants to take revenge on those who killed his brother. Unfortunately, the novel loses its way for several reasons. Yonah's character remains a cipher. He seems to care about Judaism occasionally, but most of the time he scarcely gives it a thought. He seems a little too nimble with everything that comes his way. He is equally adept at forging steel and performing surgery! The book does not have a strong central theme that carries it along. It meanders along slowly with Yonah as he travels from place to place, and the large cast of characters tends to become confusing after a while. It is also too coincidental that Yonah keeps meeting up with people that he knew as a youth. Too many coincidences weaken a book. I am very interesting in this tragic period of Jewish history, but, for all of his meticulous research, Gordon did not put together a particularly compelling story.
Rating:
Summary: Hope after a Holocaust and a lesson for us in wartime
Review: Of the many books I've read about many Holocausts, Noah Gordon's The Last Jew is one of the very few that leaves me with a feeling of hope. In Michener's The Source and Steinberg's As a Driven Leaf you marvel at stiff-necked faith in the face of unstoppable, mechanistic genocides by Babylonians and Romans. In Liss's Coffee Trader you can revel in the escape of Secret Jews from the Inquisition, where flight is the only chance. Hegi's Stones From the River shows how an urbane modern culture can sink to the depths of moral depravity; but war is the only hope for those caught in the net. And both Cohen's Avengers and Chabon's Kavalier and Clay tell you about the deep madness and murder that can well up in anyone who witnesses a Holocaust.
If The Last Jew were to have a climax, it would have to mean the destruction of its protagonist Yonah Helkias! The book is realistic instead, and you see how it is the Inquisition can leave just one Jew in all of Spain. Not forgiving, but not turning cruel, this Jew can even perform kind mitzvot for his persecutors. Gordon has found a masterful balance. He shows us all a quiet example of how we may triumph over our enemies- but without bending our cherished beliefs, without killing the murderers, and without going crazy ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but a little shallow
Review: One caveat -- I'm only half-way through the book. The back cover of this book promised me "a glimpse of history, an authentic tale of high adventure, and a tender and unforgettable love story," about a fugitive learning to fight like a knight, and "hurling snatches of almost forgotten Hebrew at the stars." I expected an exploration of what being Jewish meant to the main character, and why he would accept a life as a fugitive to hold on to it. I got a so-so historical adventure story. I felt as if the author wanted to remind his readers every so often that Yonah was attempting to remain Jewish, and did so by mentioning every so often that he said a prayer, or thought about his father. There was none of the poignancy or the psychological and emotional exploration that I had hoped for, nothing of how being Jewish shaped his responses to situations, his ethics, etc. There wasn't a great deal of excitement, either. Things just happen, almost perfunctorily, to Yonah, and he seems almost to fall into lucky situations. One small element that was a big distraction for me was the author's treatment of women. Perhaps he was trying to reflect the mindset of a young man who grew up without a mother or sisters, but the female characters almost exclusively serve as objects of sexual desire. If Yonah isn't interested in them, they're lucky to get more than a sentence. For example, the only actions the mother of Ines, a young women in whom (of course!) Yonah is interested, is allowed to take is to act suspicious when Yonah spends too much time with Ines. About Ines herself, all we are allowed to learn is that she's pretty, she works with her father, and that she's rather shy but probably interested in Yonah. Even more galling, both the narrator and the characters repeatedly refer to women as "females." ("Nine men and six females attended." "A more -- eligible -- suitor might think the female is weak and unable to perform the strenuous duties of a wife.") What gives?
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