Book Summary and Reviews of Jacob's Folly by Rebecca Miller

Jacob's Folly by Rebecca Miller

Jacob's Folly

A Novel

by Rebecca Miller

  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2013, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A luminous novel—funny and moving in equal measure—that shines with the author's unique talents

Jacob's Folly is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book that takes on desire, faith, love, acting—and reincarnation.

The novel brims with sparkling, unexpected characters: Jacob, a Jewish peddler living in eighteenth-century France; Leslie and Deirdre Senzatimore, a settled American couple; Masha, an alluring young Ultra-Orthodox Jew, who is also gravely ill. In Rebecca Miller's self-assured second novel, these four individuals will find their fates intertwined when Jacob is reincarnated as a fly in contemporary Long Island. and reincarnation.

Miller's quirky humor and acute, original intelligence animate a wonderfully memorable protagonist. Through the unique lens of Jacob's consciousness, she explores transformation in all its different guises—personal, spiritual, literal. As she considers the hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, and the collision of fate and free will, Miller's world—which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit—comes to life. Leslie's desire to act as hero and rescuer; Jacob's disastrous marriage to the childlike Hodel and his obsession with Masha—Miller sketches her characters' interior lives with compassion, subtlety, and an exceptionally light touch. Jacob's Folly is wildly inventive and ultimately moving; it will leave the reader, no less than its characters, transformed.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. A challenging read, yet remarkably entertaining and ultimately gripping." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about Jacob's Folly was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Rebecca Miller

Rebecca Miller is the author of the short-story collection Personal Velocity, her feature-film adaptation of which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, which she also adapted for the screen. She lives in New York and Ireland with her family.

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