"Skibell's wit and comic invention are infused with a mystical perspective that embraces every dimension of the Jewish soul."
"Brilliant ... Astonishingly original ... What life on earth might actually mean."
"An epic love story ... I loved the novel for its realism, for its romantic tension and for its sentence by sentence brilliance."
"A wholly original take on Freud, the Esperantists and the Warsaw Ghetto ... Intellectual comedy of the highest order."
"A funny, poignant, thoughtful and ultimately satisfying work by an author who stands with the best of them."
"Frantically funny ... "
"In A Curable Romantic, Joseph Skibell's comic intelligence embraces the first fifty years of twentieth century European Jewish history in a brilliant tour de force that is hilarious, insightful, and inventive. His comic hero, part schlemiel, part visionary, takes us on a romantic journey from the shtetl to Vienna, Paris and Warsaw, and from earth to heaven, through a series of incarnations that leave the reader contemplating the contradictions rooted in the Jewish psyche between the sensuous and the ethereal, the universal and the particular. Along the way he gives us a huge education on the dark side of Freud and Esperanto and the darkest days of the Warsaw Ghetto. Skibell's wit and comic invention are infused with a mystical perspective that embraces every dimension of the Jewish soul."
"I must say I did not know to expect so much from this phenomenal book. I was expecting a costume drama on Freud, mere 'intellectual comedy,' which from someone as talented as Joseph Skibell would have been entertaining enough. But what Skibell offers here is something far beyond historical fiction, far beyond past and present. The classic Yiddish play 'The Dybbuk' is subtitled "Between Two Worlds,' and as Skibell's story suggests, that is exactly where all of us live. In this brilliant book, Skibell draws you into a story that presents an astonishingly original and deeply plausible possibility of what life on earth might actually mean: that our neuroses, our attractions, our desires, our weaknesses and our commitments are not private pursuits or even private 'demons,' but a grand five–thousand–year–old double helix of free will and fate, demanding in every moment that we both embrace and override our destiny."
"At the core of this wonderful novel is the most unusual couple in contemporary literature, a thirteen–year–old divorced boy and the most pitiful girl in his village. In less expert hands, these characters might have been cartoonish, but in A Curable Romantic, Joseph Skibell creates of them an epic love story. His spurned Ita, almost unintelligible in life, becomes the most extraordinary voice of the afterlife. She is a perfectly believable demon and is literally too much for Freud, but not for the reader.
The sad, comic life of Dr. Sammelsohn informs us about Vienna at the turn of the century, early psychoanalysis and utopian Esperantists, but its accurate historicism is always the background because we're so caught up in the lives of his characters. At times I thought of Nabokov's King of Zembla and at times of John Barth's poet in the Sot Weed Factor, but Skibell's characters are his own, original and lively.
I loved the novel for its realism, for its romantic tension and for its sentence by sentence brilliance. "
The sad, comic life of Dr. Sammelsohn informs us about Vienna at the turn of the century, early psychoanalysis and utopian Esperantists, but its accurate historicism is always the background because we're so caught up in the lives of his characters. At times I thought of Nabokov's King of Zembla and at times of John Barth's poet in the Sot Weed Factor, but Skibell's characters are his own, original and lively.
I loved the novel for its realism, for its romantic tension and for its sentence by sentence brilliance. "
Reviews for A Blessing On The Moon
"Confirmation that no subject lies beyond the grasp of a gifted, committed imagination."
"Confirmation that no subject lies beyond the grasp of a gifted, committed imagination."
"Scene after scene is rich with emotion, humor and invention."
"Brilliant ... Astonishing. Skibell has turned the full light of his extraordinary talent and vision on one of history's darkest moments and taught us to see it again."
"Startlingly original ... Recalls the dark, hallucinatory world of Jerzy Kosinksi's The Painted Bird while at the same time surpassing it."
"As magical as it is macabre."
"Mesmerizing ... as rich as gold itself."
"A compelling tour de force, a surreal but thoroughly accessible page–turner."
"A work that combines the hallucinatory quality of D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel, the enigma of a Talmudic fable, the charm of a Yiddish folk tale, and the lyric surrealism of a Chagall painting ... A story that beguiles even as it breaks your heart."
Winner of the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Steven Turner Award for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters.
Reviews for The English Disease
"Skibell's latest is a witty and profound, moving and comic portrait of a crabby, middle–aged musicologist with a typically Jewish, post–Holocaust worldview. As he did in his first work, Skibell makes the potentially stale fresh, thanks to incisive, original images that redeem and shed new glimpses on what may, at first, appear to be old themes. Skibell succeeds, all the while giving us a complex work that, in testament to his gifts as a storyteller, is always a joy to read."
"Skibell's latest is a witty and profound, moving and comic portrait of a crabby, middle–aged musicologist with a typically Jewish, post–Holocaust worldview. As he did in his first work, Skibell makes the potentially stale fresh, thanks to incisive, original images that redeem and shed new glimpses on what may, at first, appear to be old themes. Skibell succeeds, all the while giving us a complex work that, in testament to his gifts as a storyteller, is always a joy to read."
"The delight of the novel lies in the hilarity and finesse with which the protagonist Belski delivers his rueful, razor–sharp reports from the front lines of misery. Skibell's fictional chutzpah knows no bounds."
"The sophisticated interplay of conflicted faith and prosaic everyday life, and the clashes between inborn heritage and constructed love, are at the heart of this second novel by the author of the memorable A Blessing on the Moon. . . . The story moves to a surprisingly rich denouement in which Charles's dour intellectualism takes second place to his emotional
fulfillment."
"Skibell returns with a wildly funny novel that is equal parts Philip Roth, Groucho Marx, and Woody Allen ... funny enough to make us forget about everything else."
"A widely entertaining story –– particularly because of the absurdist juxtapositions. The exposition on the Marx Brothers as a model of "the Ascent of the Assimilating Jewish Man" is priceless."
"Ferocious black comedy ... great bursts of energy, wit and humor..."
"A bristling and ironic intelligence moving with calculated steps across the tightrope of a story ... Skibell's special gift is to be intoxicated by prose and to know how to cast into the magic pools of language for wondrous things, which he pulls out phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, page by page ... Skibell is a spectacular and troubled talent ... a court jester bearing tragic tales, a comedian of bitter memories ..."
Winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters.
