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The Assistant (Mass Market Paperback)

by Bernard Malamud (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 297 pages
  • Publisher: Avon Books; Reissue edition (Feb 1991)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0380514745
  • ISBN-13: 978-0380514748
  • Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.4 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 480,637 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #11 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > M > Malamud, Bernard

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Product Description

Synopsis

A struggling neighborhood Jewish grocer takes on a helper who falls in love with his daughter and steals from his store.

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Customer Reviews

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Nice, though dark read., 2 May 2004
By Svend Tofte (denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Assistant (Paperback)
I found this book amongst my dad's extensive book collection. I picked some that seemed interesting, and this was the first I sunk my teeth into.

As the backcover no doubt tells, this book is about the insistent promises of one man, to do better. I guess everyone is somehow plagued by the "easier said then done" phrase. The main charecter in this book certainly is.

Frank (which is his name), is a drifter of sorts. A man with no place to call home, wandering the streets, doing petty works here and there. He falls upon the small store owned by the other main charecter in the book, the jew Morris. Through impressive initial display, Frank secures a job at the otherwise sad little store (competing with a store around the corner, and the owner is aging). Frank gets paid virtually nothing (though he insists that he enjoys the work, because Morris saved Franks life, by taking him in, and otherwise providing for him). What Morris doesn't know, is that Frank is secretly pocketing money, under his very nose. Frank does bring in more customers (or Morris is led to believe that it's Franks doing, when it's only because the store around the corner is doing bad), and works hard, to bring new life to the lifeless store. Frank uses this in his eternal internal moral fight, to justify stealing a few dollars from the cashregister. Frank tells himself, that he WILL pay the money back. He even keeps a note of what he takes, in his shoe, as "proof" (to himself most likely).

This is just the beginning of the story. When it starts to involve a love story, between the gentile Frank, and Morris attractive daughter, is just goes from there. Frank leaves behind him countless failed moral goals.

For this, the novel succeeds very well. In showing this side of us all. The constant setting of goals, unattainable by the very people who set them, with good intentions.

The novel also has another side, which I perhaps due to cultural (and temporal) differences do not comprehend fully. Basicly, to be a jew, is to be miserable and hardworking with nothing to show for it. I don't understand this part of the novel, but it does blend seamlessly with the resst of the novel. Morris' fear of Frank, as he senses that something is amiss, only furthers the feeling, that to be a jew, is to be miserable.

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