New York writer and critic Cynthia Ozick was shortlisted for the 1997 National Book Award (the American Booker Prize) with this novel. In it, she creates her most compelling fictional character yet--Ruth Puttermesser--a name fittingly ridiculous (it means "butter knife" in German) for such a monumental perfectionist. Ruth is obsessed with learning, and afraid of love; she is the token Jewish female in a top-notch Manhattan law firm, where Jews never get to be made partners no matter how hard they practise their squash strokes. But Ozick turns Ruth's story into a resonant parable that has no room for social realism. When Ruth's career takes a downslide, her fantasy life takes an upturn. She yearns for a daughter, and creates the first recorded female golem. Together they campaign to make Ruth mayor, and then create an Eden out of corrupt and filthy New York. But the dream turns sour when the golem turns against her mistress displaying the voracious need for sex and power that Ruth so assiduously suppresses. Ozick's cerebral, comic narration subtly offsets the fantastic events she describes. And despite Ruth's need for life to resemble Platonic ideals, her humanity is stamped on every page. --Lilian Pizzichini