THE NETANYAHUS by Joshua Cohen

This book needs a different title.  For one thing, it sounds like it’s about the family of Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and it is to some degree, but it’s fiction, although how much of it is fiction is not really clear.  Certainly the first person narrator is fictional--Ruben Blum, a history professor, specializing in the history of taxation (!) at a fictional college in the state of New York.  Blum’s family is also fictional, including his daughter, Judy, who will stop at nothing to get a nose job.  The event that finally prompts the nose job is one of the most memorable moments in the book.  The other noteworthy events involve the arrival of the Netanyahus and the bedlam that ensues.  It’s the late 1950s, and Ben-Zion Netanyahu, father of Benjamin, arrives at the college where Blum teaches for a job interview, with his wife and their three unbelievably ill-behaved children in tow.  Blum has been chosen to chaperone Netanyahu to his various appointments around campus, solely because he is also Jewish and is the only Jew employed by the college in any capacity.  One of Netanyahu’s tasks is to teach a class, and his lecture is enlightening in a twisted sort of way, but the most appealing aspect of this book for me is the dialog.  Blum’s quips are priceless throughout, and his wife, Edith, effectively voices her exasperation with the Netanyahu family’s behavior, as well as her husband’s failure to restore order.  Both Blum’s parents and his wife’s parents appear separately for visits, and they are disruptive and hilarious in their own ways but not rivaling the chaos that the Netanyahus are able to achieve.