Rating: 
Summary: Bet You Can't Eat Just One
Review: A book. You are first drawn by the intriguing title, then you notice that some of the letters are smudged, as though tear-stained. Did you somehow spill water on the cover? No, the dust jacket is designed that way, to remind us that sometimes relief comes in the form of tears, sometimes in sexual release, sometimes in death. The inside of the dust jacket is misleading - the title story, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges", is called "hilarious". Despite this, the praise is flowing (and you don't know differently, anyhow) and you are drawn into the stories between the covers. What do you find? Writing that is masterful, but misdirected. A voice that is shockingly mature, incongruous with the photograph of the handsome boy on the cover. Stories that are obsessed with persecution, whether by the government or by loved ones or by one's peers or one's church. Few of the characters within these pages are unencumbered by expectation, by disappointment, by disillusionment. You search the book for the "hilarious" story foretold and find the sad, pathetic tale of a man sexually rebuffed by his wife and given a special dispensation by his Rabbi to visit a prostitute "for the relief of unbearable urges". The result turns the tables on the poor fellow, but is not amusing. You continue reading; the last story, "In This Way We are Wise", contains the poetic, oddly beautiful, ruminations of a bomb-blast survivor and his sorrow at having lived. You are illuminated by the beauty of the prose, you are destroyed by its message. You may enjoy reading about the Jewish experience, writers such as Roth, Singer, Bellow. Depending upon your focus you may read quite a bit of this literature or perhaps only a smattering in the New Yorker. You find that Englander glazes his prose with Judaica to the point that everything here is deeply flavored with it, so no matter how much or how little you read, you taste the culture of the Jewish people, whether they be modern Jews in Israel or Holocaust-era Jews in Poland. You walk away enlightened, impressed, but perhaps a little depressed, too.
Rating: 
Summary: A truly beautiful book
Review: I am moved to review because I am shocked by the criticism of this book, which impressed me so greatly that I bought three additional copies (when it was still in hardcover) to give as gifts. I have never done anything like that before, but I don't know when I have read a book that summoned up such wonderful, beautifully felt images. I agree that the stories are not all of equal quality; The 27th Man is breathtaking, while I found the title story somewhat disappointing. (I suppose they thought it had the best title.) Still a wonderful book.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes Vivid, Humorous, Disturbingly Brilliant, Ineffable
Review: There is a place where ordinary everyday events intersect with the transcendent. This place is ineffable; Rudolf Otto, in his memorable book, "The Idea of the Holy", referred to it as the "numinous". Nathan Englander, in his collection of stories, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges", captures this place in the best of his stories. In "The Tumblers", a band of Hasidim escape a train to the death camps, ending up instead on a train of circus performers. While "clumsy as Jews", they improvise a tumbling act which leads to a magical and redemptive outcome that leaves the reader breathless and disturbed. In "The Twenty-seventh Man", Englander tells the tale of Pinchas Pelovits, a writer who has never published--a writer known only to himself. That is, until the day Pinchas is rounded up with "an eminent selection of Europe's surviving Yiddish literary community" as part of Stalin's purges. In this setting, in a room no bigger than a closet, Pinchas Pelovits encounters the numinous, finds an audience, and generates meaning for the desperate situation of his cellmates. These are only two of the nine stories, perhaps the two best. Each story in this vividly imagined and often disturbingly brilliant collection seeks to capture the meeting of the ordinary with the extraordinary, the ineffable. Each story seeks to provide a locus where religious belief (in this case, Orthodox Judaism) inscribes meaning in the mundane, and sometimes desperate, lives of its characters. While Englander doesn't always succeed, and there are as many mediocre stories in this collection as there are remarkable ones, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" is, at its best, the work of nascent literary genius, perhaps the beginning of a remarkable career.
Rating: 
Summary: Read the first story, skip the rest
Review: The first story in this collection demonstrates Englander's deep appreciation for the Jewish literary tradition. His insights into that tradition enable him to create interesting characters whose interactions demonstrate Englander's ability for genuine psychological insight. The story is a pleasure to read, both for its narrative and for its langauge. Of these stories, his transportation of the Chelmites into the world of the Holocaust is the most ambitious. Unfortunately, Englander cannot make good on the story's promise. He cannot capture the whimsy and twisted logic of the Chelm stories and, consequently, the story lumbers to a conclusion that the narrative does not compel. In the remaining stories, Englander views the lives of orthodox Jews from the perspective of a soulless voyeur. His lack of insight into the centrality of religious experience to the lives of orthodox Jews prevents him from creating interesting characters or interesting plots. Instead he produces formulaic set-pieces, none of which demonstrate any real sympathy for the characters he creates. I am, myself, not a religious person, but I know enough about the lives of orthodox Jews to know that Englander's depiction of that life is shockingly mean-spirited (and often misogynistic). The remaining stories, with the exception of the bathetic autobiographical narrative with which the collection concludes, all follow the same pattern. Englander introduces us to his protagonists, all of whom conform to secular stereotypes regarding the cramped, neurotic existences of the orthodox. Englander then introduces the narrative twist that is supposed to shock the reader. This narrative twist creates tension between the protagonist and his or her spouse, and the spouse, without exception, is completely unmoved and unsupportive. Consequently, the tension is never resolved and the characters are doomed to sexual frustration (an especially well-developed theme), alienation, and despair.
Rating:
Summary: High expectations not fully met
Review: I approached this collection of short stories with very high expectations. These expectations were set by the reviews here and in other media. Based on these reviews I expected this book to be a rich and rewarding experience. I found, however, that the stories conveyed a certain hollowness of tone and singularity of viewpoint that was distracting and ultimately not fully satisfying. There is no doubt in my mind that the author can produce beautiful prose and has important ideas to convey, but I think his true promise lies in his future work. I recommend the book, but feel it might be over-praised.
Rating:
Summary: Unbearably Beautiful Reading
Review: At 5am I tapped my husband awake with the binding of *For the Relief of Unbearable Urges* and told him he had to read it. The idea of keeping even the first story of nine ("The Twenty-seventh Man") to myself was, well, unbearable. The first story is the best. In "The Twenty-seventh Man", 27 Jewish writers are rounded up by Stalin's men to be executed. The scene that follows is like a writer's conference held in a hell: the men, for the most part unaware of their doom, discuss literature, fate and death between torture sessions. One, the twenty-seventh man, the one who seems to be there by mistake, makes up a story in his head and recites it before they go before the firing squad. His story gets a good review from its audience. And then they die. We're all the twenty-seventh man, of course, eventually slated for death no matter what our crime (being Jewish writers, being Jewish, or just being), and while waiting for the time to come, many of us tell stories, although few stories are as good as these. After the "The Wig", an eerie and funny (yes, they are all funny) tale of human hair, allowed me a space to recover, I was struck down again by "Reb Kringle". This might be called a light tale of an orthodox Jew who works as a department store Santa Claus. It is not light. Rage and despair rose and engulfed me as it engulfs Reb Itzik when what seems to be yet another greedy brat on his knee turns out to be the one child whose wish Itzik should be able to, but cannot, grant. With the exception of the first story, all that these tales lack are endings as marvelous as the wonders and horrors they contain. And if the world of Englander's orthodox Jewish characters seems distant, if you, for example, do not know ahead of time that orthodox Jewish women shave their heads and wear wigs, let not your lack of knowledge act as an impediment. This world will be that much more wondrous and strange. The pain that comes with the wonder, moreover, will be in no way alleviated -- even if you should want to believe yourself to be the twenty-seventh man: the one who, surely, doesn't fit into this category, the one who has been marked for death solely through clerical error.
Rating:
Summary: Best-Sellers List
Review: Dear Mr. Englander, We Long Island natives want you to know that your paperback is on the Newsday Best-Sellers list every Sunday just as the hardcover was last year. Congratulations! You deserve it. What a book!
Rating:
Summary: A promising debut.
Review: There's a lot of hype around this author and his first collection of short stories. For the most part I think it is all deserving. 'For the Relief...' is a great collection - original, imaginative, extremely humorous and written in a wonderfully fluid style. Most stories are lighter than I would have thought they would be and it would be nice to see Englander try some heavier themes in future books. I disagree that some knowledge of, or interest in, Judaism is required - these are universal stories, and I would demand that anyone worrying about these issues read the book and be pleasantly suprised. Having said that, there is a feeling that Englander is somewhat limiting himself - and his writing - by staying within these boundaries. But lets not forget this is only his first book and he has a long career ahead of him.
Rating:
Summary: Nathan doesn't need writing lessons
Review: (....) Nathan's stories are universal, even as they are set in an Orthodox Jewish world. As long as we're throwing out writing workshop cliches, how about "the more particular you make your stories, the more general they become." The 27th Man is a story about writing, all writers everywhere. The title story is about marriage and failure, certainly a universal theme. And in terms of the dialogue, Nathan captures this world's speech rhythms dead-on. This book is clearly above such an attack. In fact, it is the true success of the book that brings about such blatant displays of jealousy.
Rating:
Summary: Wake up, reading public.
Review: Mr. Englander: Thank you for writing the book. It is a fine book. Nice paper, pretty cover, etc. Sadly, there is little else. The Iowa theory of language has distorted your brain. Please consider the following: 1) Either title your next book "See How I Steal From Isaac Bashevis Singer And Get Away With It," or just don't write one. 2) The Judaism platform is nice. Im-por-tant, that's what the Times says. By refusing to drift anywhere outside of it, though, you isolate an enormous amount of people. Including yourself, judging by your characterization and your tone. Just a thought. 3) Unfamiliar with the Orthodox idiom, myself. However, you seem downright comfortable in it, and I wonder whether or not you can write realistic dialogue. When I was in middle school, my teacher stressed that "dialogue is the hardest part of writing." For help, she suggested going to restaurants or neighborhood coffee shops. "Sit around and listen to people talk," she said. You could buy a coffee and pretend you're reading a book, for instance. Seemingly just having coffee by yourself, reading a book. Easy as that. In reality, though, you're recording the conversations around you. You're picking up on breath patterns, subtle nuances, wierdo colloquialisms. Listening! Learning! Growing! This is of course just a suggestion. It helped a great number of people when they were 13. 4) Stop writing about mystical experiences. You do it very badly. Thanks for everything.
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