The Final Solution
By Michael Chabon

I loved Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union and have bought a few of his other books on the back of that. This very slim book is one of them.

First published in The Paris Review, it is a "murder mystery" with an old man (we never learn his name) helping a police detective solve a murder and the kidnap of a parrot. Taking place during the Second World War in the south of England, the parrot is a special companion to a German boy, assumed to be Jewish and in England as part of the Kindertransport. This is not clarified however. Neither is the parrot's habit of speaking long strings of numbers e.g. zwei eins sieben fünf vier sieben drei.

I picked this up to read partly because it was so slight, so not a huge investment in time. Like the last book of his I read, it is well written and has a wry humour throughout. The old man is a particularly irascible and funny character. Much is left unsaid regarding the boy's history, or the "numbers" the Parrot is repeating, as well as the "train song" it sometimes sings. This is not as good as the Yiddish Policeman, it seemed a little "light", perhaps too "lightweight". However, still an enjoyable enough read. I am glad I picked up his Yiddish Policeman's Union novel first because I know how good he can be. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; I am looking forward to reading that.