THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES
Nathan Englander
Vintage Books
Fiction
Hardcover: 0375404937
Paperback: 9780375704444

When a young author produces a short story collection as lavishly praised as FOR THE RELIEF OF UNBEARABLE URGES, it's understandable that expectations for his first novel will be high. But when the author takes eight years to produce that novel, the weight of those expectations can be crushing. Happily, readers of Nathan Englander's THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES won't be disappointed with this rich and vividly imagined work.

Englander's novel is set in Buenos Aires in 1976, the first year of Argentina's "Dirty War," which began after a military coup ousted Juan Peron's widow, Isabel. Kaddish Poznan and his wife Lillian view the militarization of their city with increasing unease. Their 19-year-old son, Pato, is a college student who expresses his resentment of the political crackdown by refusing to carry his identity card, but exhibits more in the way of typical teenage rebelliousness than political radicalism.

At first, the military's encroachment on civil liberties has little effect on the Poznans' daily lives. Kaddish continues to pursue his bizarre vocation, removing the names from gravestones in the cemetery of the Society of the Benevolent Self --- the Jewish burial ground that houses the remains of the lower classes of Argentine Jewish society, the social strata from which Kaddish, himself the son of a prostitute, comes. One of Kaddish's clients, a prominent but cash-strapped plastic surgeon, persuades him to accept two free nose jobs in exchange for such an assignment, with transforming consequences for Kaddish and disastrous ones for Lillian.

Both Lillian and Kaddish fear for Pato's safety, but they exhibit their concern in oddly different ways. Lillian spends a relative fortune on the installation of a steel door in their working class apartment, while Kaddish takes it upon himself to burn what he considers to be some of Pato's more questionable books. In the end, neither measure succeeds, as the secret police raid the Poznans' apartment and haul Pato away, converting him into one of the thousands of "disappeared" whose absence haunts this story.

When Pato is seized, Lillian becomes obsessed with finding him. In the process she's enmeshed in the military junta's bizarre and almost comical bureaucracy. She spends long days in a world that owes an obvious debt to Kafka and Orwell, shuttling between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Special Cases, a strange agency that seems to have as much to do with helping citizens make arrangements to flee the country as it does with efforts to find the "disappeared." Eventually, Lillian's search becomes a fulltime occupation, her emotions cycling from despair to hope and back again.

From the beginning, Lillian's determination to find her son is counterbalanced by Kaddish's rising pessimism about the prospect he will ever return. Kaddish, feeling himself inadequate to the task when he compares his activity to Lillian's, combs the underbelly of Buenos Aires society, searching for clues. Eventually, he encounters a character known as "the navigator," who describes in harrowing detail one method for disposing of the prisoners and convinces Kaddish that all hope is lost.

Lillian and Kaddish turn finally to the Jewish community for help. At first, Lillian is optimistic that the leader of the United Jewish Congregations of Argentina, the organization representing respectable Jewish society, will assist her, but in a scene of profound disillusionment, it becomes clear that her pleas for aid are fruitless. Kaddish consults an elderly rabbi, hoping he will sanction the father's belief that Pato is dead and thereby permit the family to observe the Jewish mourning rituals. Kaddish's ultimate act to raise the money that may purchase Pato's freedom is stunning in its audacity and heartbreaking in its execution.

In THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES Englander has skillfully interwoven vibrant elements of family and political drama that is at times surreal but is no less poignant for being so. He dwells on the theme of what it means to be Jewish in a non-Jewish world: Kaddish's dubious ancestry, his work erasing Jewish names from memory, even the plastic surgeries he and Lillian undergo all echo this theme. Thankfully, he offers no glib answers to the weighty questions he poses and his admirable willingness to wrestle with them is consistent with much that is valued in the Jewish tradition.

One can only hope it won't be another eight years decade before Englander produces his next work. His voice is too singular, passionate and compelling to remain silent that long.

   --- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg (mwn52@aol.com)

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