The Book of Jonah: A Novel

Written by Joshua Max Feldman

Narrated by David Pittu

A major literary debut, an epic tale of love, failure, and unexpected faith set in New York, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas

The modern-day Jonah at the center of Joshua Max Feldman's brilliantly conceived retelling of the Book of Jonah is a young Manhattan lawyer named Jonah Jacobstein. He's a lucky man: healthy and handsome, with two beautiful women ready to spend the rest of their lives with him and an enormously successful career that gets more promising by the minute. He's celebrating a deal that will surely make him partner when a bizarre, unexpected biblical vision at a party changes everything. Hard as he tries to forget what he saw, this disturbing sign is only the first of many Jonah will witness, and before long his life is unrecognizable. Though this perhaps divine intervention will be responsible for more than one irreversible loss in Jonah's life, it will also cross his path with that of Judith Bulbrook, an intense, breathtakingly intelligent woman who's no stranger to loss herself. As this funny and bold novel moves to Amsterdam and then Las Vegas, Feldman examines the way we live now while asking an age-old question: How do you know if you're chosen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Feb 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781427236227

Joshua Max Feldman

Joshua Max Feldman is the author of The Book of Jonah. Born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, he has lived in England, Russia, and Switzerland, and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Reviews for The Book of Jonah

[imperfectcj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received The Book of Jonah as a review copy through LibraryThing.The first half of this book I thought was fantastic. So often when a novel is set in New York City, I feel like the author is just name-dropping, trying to seem cool by showing off-hand knowledge of street names and neighborhood spots. Feldman writes about New York City in a much more pleasant and realistic way. It's a real, three-dimensional place in The Book of Jonah. I've only spent a few days in New York City several years before the main character moved there, but through Feldman's writing, I felt I could really see both the good and the bad of the city. Jonah's love for and ambivalence about New York came through in Feldman's descriptions.Feldman also did an incredible job setting up Jonah as an unlikely prophet. Jonah's visions are as believable as his efforts to evade them, and I found myself being sucked into the story of his continual missteps. Jonah comes through by the skin of his teeth so many times just to screw everything up again; I spent a fair amount of the first half cringing on Jonah's behalf. Poor Jonah's suffering is definitely biblical in its proportions. He's a man hanging on by a thread, and I was never 100% sure whether I wanted to root for him to succeed at what he was trying to do or to fail and perhaps become a better person for it.I always worry that I give glowing reviews to too many of the review copies I read. I worry the appearance that I like almost everything might damage my credibility as a reviewer (not that I work very hard to be professional in my reviews anyway, I guess, but I like being credible). So I felt reassured when I started feeling a little less enthusiastic about the book at the end of Part I.It was at this point that I began noticing more---and being more annoyed by---Feldman's writerly idiosyncrasies. Like his enthusiastic use of em-dashes. I myself am partial to em-dashes, but I found myself wishing he'd vary the punctuation a little, trade out some of the em-dashes for commas, or semi-colons; even a colon would have been welcome. I don't think this distracted me from the writing, but rather I think I noticed the punctuation because the writing became less rich and engaging in the second half of the book.In the second half, Feldman started using a lot more internal dialogue. Characters asked themselves rhetorical questions and mused about their situations in the first half, but they seemed to do it more in the second half. I felt like Feldman was just writing out the interpretation he wanted readers to have of the book up to that point, rather than letting it be ambiguous and letting us figure it out for ourselves.I also found the few days of journal entries at the beginning of Part II a little strange. So Judith presumably never kept a journal, or at least there was no mention of a journal before this point, but she buys a Moleskine and journals in great detail for several days then just stops? I didn't quite buy it. Maybe if it had been a device used throughout the book (she's always stopping and staring journals or she's always journaled and we're just seeing journal from select periods), or if the journal entries had a more distinctive "Judith" voice to them, it would have worked better for me.In general, though, I found Judith's storyline to be weaker than Jonah's. Without giving away spoiler details, while the buildup to the turning point in her life was masterful, I found the direction Judith's life took after that a little implausible. She met with some pretty intriguing characters that just didn't seem realistic to me. And the intermeshing of Jonah's and Judith's lives felt a little contrived. I can accept the similarities in their young lives, but I don't know...the arrangement that they each end up with enough disposable income to do pretty much whatever they want didn't ring true to me. If they were the only ones, I might accept it as coincidence, but there are also minor characters who are in the same situation. Maybe I've not spent enough time with wealthy people, but does this sort of thing happen often? People having money to fly anywhere in the world for no particular reason? Or maybe it doesn't happen often, but people with money just find each other wherever they go, like how I meet Ohioans at parties in California, in restaurants in Florida, and even under Delicate Arch in Utah?Overall, I enjoyed the book, but the first half was stronger than the second half. I kind of wish it had continued to be a little more vague, more biblical in the second half. But maybe moving into doubt and into the mundane was the point. What does the prophet do when God stops speaking to him? Life goes on.While I was left wanting at the end of this novel, I would definitely read more of Feldman's writing. The first half of this novel was excellent, and I would read another novel of his based on the promise of writing like that.

[madnessabides · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Entertaining in a quaint 21st century sort of way... A modern retelling of the biblical story of Jonah, I think, has plenty of upside for the literary religious folk (that is a thing, I’m sure), it is just that, for me, the story ultimately was not interesting (and maybe that is because in no way could I ever be considered literarily religious). This is Joshua Max Feldman's debut novel, and it parts it shows, but not often. If the description peeks your interest, I’d say go for it, in the end it is a well written book.

[nyiper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The audio kept me listening but I tended to not worry too much when I was busy enough with what else I was doing to sort of half-listen! The book is a Jonah story---on top of the world! And then...at the bottom. Because we are following more than just Jonah's life. the author did give a good summary at the end about those other characters, which I always appreciate rather than just have a story sort of drop off a cliff and end. The audio does provide the story of the biblical Jonah in the last two tracks of the final disk.

[freckles1987 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received The Book of Jonah through the LT Early Reviewers program. The Book of Jonah starts slow; introducing characters who aren't really likable, who aren't really doing anything out of the ordinary. But then Jonah is touched by the sublime (possibly) and the book starts to pick up speed. The majority of this book is an exploration of certainty-how do you know if you're chosen? Is there any indicator that God will touch your life? And if you are chosen, how do you know what to do? What does it mean to be chosen? This uncertainty and back-and-forth is the greatest strength in The Book of Jonah. I found that the 336 pages flew by. The topic, characters, setting, and atmosphere were all perfectly portrayed and fully realized. The only fault I found was that it ended too abruptly (is there a second novel in the works?)and I was left wanting more. Both Jonah's and Judith's storyline felt like they were building up dramatically through the whole novel...but ended up petering out. It may be an intentional effect, a statement on modern life...or just a weak ending. It's hard to say.

[jcervone-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was an interesting look at how prophecy would potentially function in a 21st Century context. The title is misleading as there is no clear connection to the Biblical story of Jonah or to anything relating to him. However, I did enjoy the author's exploration of psychosis and drug use vs a prophetic vision from God. I very much enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it to others.

[shazjhb · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Did not really enjoy this book maybe because it did not tie into Jonah. If it had been called something else and the reference was different it would have been a better book.

[karieh_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think there was something more dramatic or more meaningful planned for “The Book of Jonah” that either I missed or that never fully came to fruition. The story alternates between the lives of the two main characters, Jonah and Judith. Throughout the book, the reader is never quite sure how their lives will eventually intersect, and have a great deal of reading to do until they finally find out.Both characters have similar beginnings. Both are smart, hardworking, and unfamiliar with much of the darker sides of life. And when tragedy strikes one and an unexpected phenomenon happens to the other – their lives changes in ways they could never have imagined.Although Jonah is the eponymous main character; Judith resonated more strongly with me. Once her life changes forever, she looks at life, at her life, from the detached point of view of a bystander. The feeling behind her voice disappears and she makes comments on her life rather than experiencing it. “This afternoon, went through my own papers. Tests, essays, going back to elementary years at Gustav’s. Odd to see that it all ended up here, in the present.” She is simply unable to reconcile the person she was with the person she finds herself living as now. “She didn’t have any of the social skills associated with a good salesperson, but she had what one of her employers had once called “artistic gravitas”: Buyers took her seriously, which Judith attributed to the fact that she didn’t smile.”Jonah is harder to relate to. Possible because the changes in his life come from choices he makes rather than circumstances outside of his control. And the book never really made me believe in his choices – neither the bad ones nor the good ones. The reasoning he comes up with or impulses he follows don’t make quite enough sense for me to trust him as a character. He thinks to himself at one point, “But why was his faith never more than an “And yet” – no more powerful than a caveat, a foot note, a suspicion? Why when he tried to take hold of it, did he feel no more certain than grasping an icicle?” I agree with this assessment of the strength of his faith, which is one of the main reason I had trouble reconciling his actions.(Although I can wholeheartedly agree with some of his observations, especially once he is in Las Vegas. “One of the (many) things he’d grown to dislike about the strip was the fact that you couldn’t walk in a straight line from one end to the other: navigating it required passing through a maze of skywalks, escalators, moving sidewalks, so that you might think you were walking along the strip, only to find yourself halfway down a covered bridge to the entrance at Harrah’s – which, of course, was the whole point.”Once Jonah and Judith finally come together, the reader, for all of his/her patience, is scarcely rewarded. There is no “Aha!” moment, no big reveal about why their paths should/have crossed. Judith expresses it beautifully when she asks Jonah, “But the fact remains, you need me far more than I need you. After all, if I don’t play along, then what was the point of all the time you’ve spent looking for me? What was the point of anything you’ve been through?”And I found myself agreeing with her. “What was the point?” What transpired upon these pages that showed a true evolution of character or faith or spirit? What was the grand plan of this story? And did I just miss it or was it never really there?

[jennyo_587543 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read a few other reviews of this book that said it "fizzled at the end" or that they liked the first half of the book and not the second. I didn't feel that way at all. I liked it end to end. I set it down for about a week in the middle of reading it (because I was traveling and reading on my iPad) so maybe that's why I didn't feel like it was two different books. I thought it was very well written. At first, I didn't like the characters much. Of course, I didn't like the Biblical Jonah much either. I can't even really say the characters grew on me as much as I just got caught up in their stories and wanted to know how it would all end. And I felt satisfied with the ending. This is a pretty lame review. Sorry about that. I've had a rough week. I'll try to do better next time. For now I'll just say I thought this was a good read, and I'd read another book by this author.

[muddyboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jonah and Judith are people that seem to have successful preordained futures charted out for them. But, nothing in life really goes the way it is supposed to and for this pair in a lot of ways that is a good thing. Feldman delivers a wonderfully told story with lots of twists and turns that make the lives of his two protagonists quite interesting for the reader. I think this book could be nicely adapted into a screenplay for a very captivating movie. Feldman is a literary star on the rise.

[eesil-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I won a copy of this book from Goodreads. I am not sure how well the concept of the modern retelling of a biblical story works in this case, but I found myself enjoying The Book of Jonah as a story on its own. Jonah and Judith were familiar modern characters searching for a way to live their lives -- but idiosyncratic enough to keep me interested. And the writing was very good -- including the tangential musings that others reviewing the book seemed to criticize. My only real complaint is that the story and characters seemed to fizzle out with no real shape at the end. Still, definitely worth the read and I will look forward to Feldman's next book.

[tb8727 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received an ARC of this book from Library Thing. I requested it because the premise was intriguing--a modern retelling of a Biblical story set in NYC, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas. How could that possibly work? Not very well, in my opinion. The characters and story are familiar, but it is heavy with religious allegory. Young urban professional, Jacob, is a superficial jerk who wants to be a better man. But he cannot break his pattern of bad behavior until he loses everything. Brilliant and tragic Judith's sad story runs along side Jacob's, until they intersect, and the story rushes to its conclusion. On the up side, Feldman has a gift for descriptive writing. There are many memorable, quotable passages. I am certain that my secular viewpoint negatively influenced my experience with this book.

[slavenrm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"As usual I received this book for free for the purposes of review. Unfortunately I can't seem to determine exactly from whom. Whover the source of this unknown beneficence, I give my candid thoughts below.Having read this, would I pay money for it? Probably not, but I'm on the fence.This is a bifurcated narrative told from the perspective of two people with rather tragic lives. The story flips back and forth between the two the whole way until... well, in the interest of avoiding spoilers I'll just say 'until'.On the positive side, this book is wonderfully and elegantly crafted. The author is obviously erudite and can really cobble together some wonderful sentences and has a flair for imagery. The style is very fluid and readable and despite being a VERY long 350+ pages, once you get into the rhythm of the text it speeds along quite nicely. I was able to choke it down in 8-10 hours. It's also very neatly segmented into sections of 20 pages or so if the verbal finery gets to be too much for you then you can put it down and come back later. It has a very literary feel to it; it's not at all a fluffy novel.To the negative side of the novel, the narrative seems to hint at many grand story lines but never seems to decide to finish any of them. On one hand it's an allegory about right and wrong... but only weakly. On another hand it's a vast story arc bringing characters together in quirky and unexpected ways... but only sorta. I feel about this book the way I feel about this review I'm writing. I want to say something more powerful. I have plenty of words and I keep typing and typing and typing but it just never happens. The threads never come together. That's exactly how I feel about the book... Just left a bit dangling.To summarize, no, I wouldn't pay money for this but boy can the author pump out some words. He's vastly prolix and quite skilled but the proverbial participles were just left a bit dangling."

[narshkite · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received an Advance Readers Copy of this book through Librarything Early Reviewers in return for writing an honest review. This is the "tale of two books." Like many first-time writers, Feldman tries to do too much here. Its a damn shame because he is a fine writer. The first half of this book is really quite good. Sadly, when he turns from exploring his well drawn characters and their lives, examined and unexamined, to allegory things become a bit tortured and heavy-handed. I truly enjoyed the first half of this book, and I am hoping that when this writer publishes his next book he will be less fixated on hitting all the points in his outline and more focused on letting the narrative flow its natural conclusion.

[jshrop_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Book of Jonah is an interesting novel that really makes you work for the story, and is at times painful to bear witness to the events unfolding; not in a horrible way, but definitely not in a pleasurable way. I have mixed feelings about this novel: on the one hand it has many great scenes and excellent narratives while on the other hand has such fatalist characters that it makes you want to give up on humanity as a whole. Feldman's run on sentences start to get annoying and his use of the " - a totally different thought shoved into a sentence that is already too long - now back to the original thought" got old fast. I found myself reading longer than I intended in a sitting in the begining, as I was intrigued as to the direction of the characters twisting circumstances. By the middle I was hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but in the end felt that the story didn't hold up as well as it had at the outset. I appreciate that it didn't wrap the story up in a pleasant little "and they all lived happily ever after", but it was more on the order of "it took these characters this long just to get here". I suppose ultimately to illicit these feelings and make you think deeper, for better or worse, is the intention of any novelist, so for that I commend Mr. Feldman. I would have to say that this is an ok story with interesting and intriguing portions, but as a whole was unfortunately unsatisfying.

[its1lauren3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Joshua Max Feldman's debut novel, The Book of Jonah, loosely retells the story of the biblical Jonah in a modern day context. Although the idea was interesting, it felt more like the story was written to be a movie rather than a book. In the end, I was left dissatisfied - there still a lot of questions left unanswered, including about Jonah's interior thought life and the resolution of his vision/journey/faith. I also thought Feldman missed an opportunity to connect more themes, ideas, and motifs back to the biblical book.

[katybee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Joshua Max Feldman was brave to attempt a modern retelling of Jonah's story from the Bible. It could have gone very wrong but he manages to put it off with heart, intelligence, and some good characters. He creates Jonah as a very flawed man, an ambitious Manhattan lawyer who starts to have visions and eventually loses absolutely everything in his life. On a quest that eventually takes him to Amsterdam and Las Vegas, Jonah meets a brilliant woman who has also sustained a very great loss from 9/11. To the author's credit, I cared about this two people and enjoyed reading about their journey to find more meaningful lives. There's some good messages in the end: Hey! Life is about more than attaining wealth and beauty and power! One can actually survive with very little. Have a mission! Look outside your own life and help others! And especially, remember that everything can change in the blink of an eye.

[jim53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Feldman's first novel offers a modern retelling of the story of Jonah, the Old Testament prophet who runs from the mission to which God calls him. The biblical Jonah is chased by God, carried for three days in the belly of a giant fish, and finally fulfills his mission of preaching repentance to the city of Nineveh. The modern Jonah is a fast-rising corporate lawyer and is offered an assignment whose successful completion will help him become a partner at his firm. At the same time, he finally ends his relationship with his mistress so that he can move in with his girlfriend. However, just as his life seems to be coming together, providing him everything he wants, it starts falling apart. He begins having visions, goes on a drinking binge, develops the beginning of a conscience, and ruins his job and love opportunities. Given a generous severance package, he moves to Amsterdam and spends his time smoking dope on an old friend's houseboat.We also see Judith Bulbrook growing up, matriculating at Yale, and losing her parents in the 9/11 attacks. She loses her ability to focus on her studies and drifts into a position decorating a huge gambling establishment that a millionaire is building in Las Vegas. Jonah, meanwhile, has decided that he must search for the mysterious young lady whom he met at an art show. The novel is pretty dense and requires some concentration to keep up with what's going on. This is fine, although it made it a poor candidate for bedtime reading. I found the stories interesting and worth the effort. I'm not sure I understood Jonah's reasons for doing several things, but then I guess he didn't either, caught up in a malaise that he didn't understand. Jonah and Judith are mostly appealing characters, and I enjoyed seeing them progress. Feldman's style is mostly appropriate for the stories that he is telling, although it goes a little flatter than necessary in some stretches. I found myself annoyed at the headings that matched the current text to the events in the biblical story. Couldn't the author give us enough credit to know the story and detect the correspondences? I concluded that he must have felt that he couldn't, and that the effect was not so distracting as to be a problem. Overall I found this a very enjoyable read, one that required a bit more work than some, but rewarded it.

[banjo123 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Feldman borrows the plot from the biblical story of Jonah to tell us about two contemporary American Jews. Jonah, the title character, begins the novel as a corporate lawyer with sketchy morals and a complicated love life, living in NYC. His life falls apart when he hears the voice of G-d. Judith, an academic, turned art dealer, turned Las Vegas real estate business woman is numbed by tragedy and unable to move forward in her life. The book is well-written, and the minor characters are well written and fun. Judith’s story was interesting, and emotionally compelling. Jonah, however, is a very passive character, and it’s hard to understand what drives him. I think that I was turned off, because I have a strong sense of the personality of the biblical Jonah, and it’s very different (and more interesting) than this Jonah. Maybe that’s the difference between life in biblical times, when you could get annoyed at the Divine and go off and sulk under a tree, and life in the 21st century USA, where we fall apart if our i-phones are taken away.

[garyseverance-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Book of Jonah is the story of a young Jewish man living the so-called “good life” in New York City. A studious man his entire young life in line for partnership in a prestigious law firm, Jonah has been willing to work very hard for years to reach his goal. But, what does the goal of partner offer him that he doesn’t already have? Good food, booze, grass, two girlfriends, and a place to sleep in the Big Apple – he already has these maintainers of daily life. Now, as his final test of potential club membership in his firm, he is asked to support the efforts of senior partners to protect a corporate client that has committed multi-million dollar patent theft. Jonah thinks why not, this immoral activity will lead to the peace of mind payoff for all his efforts at success.Similar to the Biblical description of Jonah, God steps in at a booze and drug fueled party and shocks him in the bathroom with a revelation of the destruction of New York City. It is such stunning negative information that Jonah rejects it and refuses to play the role of warning the people of the world. He tries to run away by ratting out his own firm’s dirty deeds. Jonah is swallowed by the Millennium whale, finding himself fired and footloose with a hefty severance package. Leaving New York aimlessly, Jonah finds himself stoned every day in Amsterdam, the belly of the whale. Is this the fate of the man “chosen by God?” Fate has something in store for Jonah in the form of a chance meeting in Amsterdam with a kindred spirit. But, true to his character, Jonah rejects her too – at first.In the Bible, Jonah reluctantly accepts his role as prophet. Does the Millennium Jonah make good with God through his relationship with his Jewish kindred spirit? The reader will find the answer in the intelligent but rather flat prose of Mr. Feldman in his first novel. I predict that the author will find his way and breath a bit more life into his characters in future novels.

[msbaba · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“The Book of Jonah,” by debut author Joshua Max Feldman, is not a religious novel. This is a smart, splendid, literary novel that can be appreciated and enjoyed by anyone, of any faith, or without faith. The novel is an odd hybrid: part dark romantic comedy, part subtle satire, and part modern-day gloss on an ancient Biblical morality tale. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was very clever and intellectually satisfying…definitely unique and in a class of its own. In the Biblical “Book of Jonah,” God is angry at the sins of the people of Nineveh. He appears to Jonah in a vision and directs him to go to Nineveh and tell the people that they must repent or He will destroy the city. Jonah’s first reaction is to flee from the responsibility that God has demanded of him. He flees to the sea. This leads to a huge storm and a whale…and, well, if you don’t know the rest of the details, it’s best if you refresh your memory or look up a summary of the details online before you begin reading this version. Don’t expect the novel to adhere closely to the ancient text. This is wholly and delightfully different, but the scaffolding of the Biblical tale is there and easy to discern. For example, in the Biblical version Jonah spends three days inside the belly of a whale repenting his sin of fleeing from God’s will; in the modern version, Jonah spends a month living on a houseboat in Amsterdam…and he does this after his entire life falls apart in a few days through a rapid-fire series of ruinous events (akin to the storm at sea). And how do we know for sure that this part of the book coincides with the belly of the whale days? Easy. It’s because the modern version has chapter headings that correspond to that part of the Biblical text. You don’t have to be a deconstruction genius to figure it out. But part of the intellectual joy comes from figuring out what is not obvious…what’s in the small details. There’s no doubt that Feldman has written a novel blatantly critical of today’s big-city world culture. New York and its inhabitants are the equivalent of ancient Nineveh. He leaves readers with a lot to think about. Has our global, contemporary world of high finance, law, and real estate development become reprehensible and morally bankrupt? Are some of our brightest young minds—those promising elite hypereducated overachievers starting up the ladders of top-notch careers in high finance, banking, law, and real-estate development—being seduced by greed and a narcissistic, self-indulgent culture to accept this morally flawed civilization as status quo? As morally acceptable? As the necessary price we must pay to reap the rewards of an every more complex civilization? The book contains a great deal that lovingly focuses on the American Jewish culture experience. I found the two main characters—Jonah Daniel Jacobstein and Judith Klein Bulbrook—humorous, warmheartedly stereotypical, but wholly believable. I was fascinated to find out what was happening to them and curious to understand the odd choices they made in their lives. If I have one significant criticism about the book and these characters, it is that I felt like a spectator. I witnessed and intellectually understood the character’s emotional pain but I did not feel it. There was an odd, intellectual detachment from the characters and the plot. Feldman’s modern-day “Book of Jonah” succeeds first and foremost because it is a delightful story. But it also succeeds because it engages questions worth asking, in particular: what does it mean to be good and how are we to achieve it?This book will probably not have a wide appeal, but to those of you who may be intrigued by what I’ve said in this review, please do not hesitate to read it. You will probably enjoy it a great deal, as I did.