Jacob's Folly

Book excerpt: Jacob is a Jewish peddler living in eighteenth-century France; Leslie and Deirdre Senzatimore are a settled American couple; and Masha is an alluring, young, ultra-Orthodox Jew who is gravely ill. In Jacob’s Folly, these four individuals will find their fates intertwined and the courses of their lives irrevocably altered when Jacob is reincarnated as a housefly in contemporary Long Island. Through the unique lens of Jacob’s consciousness, Miller explores transformation in all its different guises—personal, spiritual and literal. As she considers the hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, and the collision of fate and free will, Miller’s world—which is our own, transfigured by her startlingly clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit—comes to vibrant life. Leslie’s desire to act as hero and rescuer; Jacob’s disastrous marriage to the childlike Hodle, and his intense obsession with Masha—Miller sketches her characters’ interior lives with compassion, subtlety and an exceptionally light touch. Jacob’s Folly is wildly inventive, and ultimately moving; it will leave the reader, no less than its characters, transformed.