I did not get this book AT ALL. Having read and enjoyed Notes on a Scandal (and if you can get past THAT premise you're good to go for just about anything) I was sure I would like her new one.Well. For one thing, while she is an eloquent writer with a nice vocabulary, she seems to have fallen into this new wave writing style of 'how many details can I toss in to seem perceptive?' Yes theoretically I could write aobut my daily commute in my novel and tell you about how my metro card didn't go through the first time, much to the dismay of the people behind me, and how the steps were filthy and Ir an down only to just miss my train and how frustrating that is, but, um, do we care? I think that reality TV has had a strong impact on what we think we need to express in the written word.The second issue I take with this work is its characters - none of them are likeable. The mom, Audrey, is disgusting. She has only the nastiest things to say, ostensibly unprovoked, to her best friend, husband, and kids. There is nothing charming about her harshness, it is only shocking and out of place. Her kids range from the same endearing personality to completely vapid and passive. One character to the next oozed dysfunction and edge with no redeeming feature. In addition, after you are so weirded out by the extent of Audrey's obnoxiousness (like when she yells at her husband's mistress 'you whore' and her daughter just assumes she's the one being addressed, because, you know, that's normal for them) which seems to have no explanation, Heller GIVES you an explanation. two thirds through and Heller's narrative which is all aobut tell and not show interrupts to say, sotto voce, this plucky woman uses obnoxiousness as a defense mechanism, perhaps now it has gone too far. Well that nice little decoy didn't endear me much either.The overall premise is that Audrey who, when you first meet her, seems incredibly boring, seems to fall rather quickly and inexplicably for loud mouthed slick lawyer (a Jew, go figure - thanks Zoe) and they decide to marry after one night together, and go save the world. You then meet their kids forty years later who are either addicted to heroine, sadly overweight and unhapily married, or snippy and annoying. The dad has a stroke and now a big secret (sadly predictable) is unfolded - weirdly enough, this is supposed to be a huge catalyst and yet no one in the book seems to actually care or respond to it in any effective way.Rosa, the oldest, finds Judaism much to her mother's rather opbvious disgust, and goes to Monsey for Shabbos to experience a weekend that I was appalled by. She is bossed around by some little snot who waits outside the bathroom door to make sure she doesn't turn off the light then has a freak out when Rosa forgets and turns it off, then makes sure to tell everyone about it, and then she gets reprimanded for it (after already being reprimanded for getting lost and missing candle lighting - yup that's exactly how we treat someone we are introducing to the faith). She is chastised for carrying a toothbrush to the bathroom (we don't do that on Shabbos - it counts as work!) and she is called a goy by one of the younger girls. She is told rather plainly that she is a man hating woman's libber by asking one of the girls if she will be having a bat mitzvah since 'the orthodox don't do that, only the watered down, we feel left out reform.' The family seems to care more about the carpet and the matching curtains than their guest. Having spent countless Shabboses (some in Monsey) with people who are new or flirting with the faith, I don't know where she got this from but it was so completely unrealistic and overblown - generally if you are that hellish you do not look to bring people into your home like this, and the guest doesn;t generally want to return. Somehow she manages to come back for Rosh Hashana though Gd only knows why (Heller certianly doesn't explain) and we are treated to interesting yet wholly unrealistic dialogue between Rosa and the rabbi about Judaism - so I guess this is where the belief stuff comes in, but that was it - there was nothing else, just BD Dayehu style of dailogue (cue diatribe here for several paragraphs that no human would actually speak) that somehow does it for Rosa such that she is wearing a 'fetchingly biblical' headscarf at the end of the novel (without actually having gotten married - glad you know about the tooth brushing, Zoe, maybe get your facts checked about hair covering). The book doesn't appear to be about anything - there are a lot of red herrings and a lot of unrealistic character shifts which I guess are meant to depict growth yet it doesn't appear that anyone changes for the better or that the changes can be attributed to anything, or, for the life of me, how this is about believers?? It seems to be about misdirected and mistaken people fumbling through life.
Zoe Heller excels at misanthropy. It can be funny (Everything You Know) or cringe-making (Notes on a Scandal) but here it just seemed to go a little too far. I felt like shaking Heller and saying, "You know, there are some people in the world who are kind and generous!". Not in Heller's world there aren't. Notes on a Scandal created a wonderful uneasiness, because I had a sneaking sympathy with Barbara while still being creeped-out by her behaviour. Here, Audrey is so horrible that you cannot imagine why her perfectly pleasant friend Jean would put up with her for so long -- or indeed why the members of her abused, dysfunctional family have not fled long ago. Even Audrey's apparently maganimous gesture at the end of the book seemed to me to be more manipulation, aimed at neatly pulling the rug out from under her enemy's feet and setting herself up (quite unjustifiably) as a saint.I got fed up with the book after about 200 pages, but it did redeem itself later, and I'm glad I finished it. Zoe Heller writes well, is keen-eyed and waspish in her misanthropy, and she addresses some interesting issues. Most notable for me was the way that families (and particularly Audrey in this case) define their members' characteristics in infancy and are blind to any changes that happen later. So Karla is forever type-cast as a dim, pliable victim. Adopted drug-addict son Lenny is referred to by Audrey as her "baby" when he is 34, and Audrey is clearly uncomfortable with the idea that he might actually shake off his addiction and cease to be dependent on her. Heller also cleverly explores what the characters believe in and how it shapes their lives (mostly in nasty ways!).
What do You think about The Believers (2015)?
I think I enjoyed this book, but I can't think why. It is well written - the narrative flows easily and the style and language are conversational and carry the story well.The novel explores the nature of belief - religious, social, moral and political. It systematically takes apart the motivation of the characters' in their beliefs, but fails to take a stand itself.The main problem is, in common with many 'comic' tales, that the characters are unlikeable to the point of being grotesque. Most of them are self obsessed and full of their own sense of rightiousness (with the exception, perhaps surprisingly, of the orthodox Jewish rabbi who is caring and thoughtful while maintaining a dignified surety in his faith). Perhaps this makes it easier to accept the bad things that happen to them, that they don't deserve happiness; though this may put the reader into the same self rightious catagory as the novel's protaganists.
—Tim Bold
I'll get back to you on this one, but my initial feeling is that while the prose can be wonderfully descriptive ("Up close, the three men were a small anthology of body odors"), the characters are so AWFUL, so sure of themselves in their political stances and moral superiority that even though it's clear that the author shares my opinion of them I am not sure I will be able to make it through. ****It took me awhile to get back to this review, because I wanted to think about why I disliked the characters so much -- I'm going to admit that they hit kind of close to home. That said, and again, while I think this is a very well written novel, parts of which have stayed with me in the last few weeks, I don't feel like I need to hang out for several hundred pages with people (or, uhm, parts of myself) I kind of avoid in my day to day life. Also, maybe social satire is not really for me?
—Katie
Zoe Heller can write. She is a master of acerbic wit, denigration, parody. sarcasm, and layered complexity. She writes with a sensibility that I can only compare to varying musical keys. Her story vacillates from the minor keys to the major, from melodic to dissonant, sometimes in the same paragraph.This novel is about the Litvinoff family. There is Audrey, the mother and matriarch. She has an attitude like spoiled meat. She "was always congratulating herself on her audacious honesty, her willingness to express what everyone else was thinking. But no one...actually shared Audrey's ugly view of the world. It was not the truth of her observations that made people laugh, but their unfairness, their surreal cruelty" (p.53). No one is spared from her cruelty except her husband and her son, Lenny. Audrey wonders how she has become a harridan. "Once upon a time, her brash manner had been a mere posture - - a convenient and amusing way for an insecure teenage bride, newly arrived in America, to disguise her crippling shyness." (p189) "But somewhere along the way, when she hadn't been paying attention, her temper had ceased to be a beguiling party act that could be switched on an off at will. It had begun to express authentic resentments: boredom with motherhood, fury at her husband's philandering, despair at the pettiness of her domestic fate". (p. 189) "Her anger had become part of her. It was a knotted thicket in her gut, too dense to be cut down and too deeply entrenched in the loamy soil of her disappointments to be uprooted". (p. 190) Audrey's public persona is that she is the power behind the throne, Joel's muse. At heart, however, she knows she is not that. Had she not married Joel, she would have been relegated to a clerical job in England and probably never have left the provincial town where she was raised.Joel has been a star in the ideological socialist battle, a protester at heart. He is an attorney who has championed the underdog whether guilty or innocent. He does this until the day he has a stroke while in the midst of a trial for an alleged Al Quaida sympathizer.Rosa had been her father's star child, the one who appeared to take the family's ideological messages most to heart. She had lived in Cuba for four years, marched while a student at Bard college and wanted her father's approval. Lately, however, she has been toying with the idea of orthodox Judaism much to her parents' chagrin. Now, her Rabbi has asked her to make a commitment to Judaism.Karla is a passive and quiet social worker, locked into a stale marriage to a union organizer who doesn't appreciate her. While growing up she was the lost child, the one who desperately sought, but rarely received attention. She is self-denigrating and worries constantly about her weight and her body image. Audrey doesn't help things by telling Karla how fat she is. Now Karla is finding herself falling in love with the owner of a newspaper kiosk near her work site and she is torn about what to do. Her husband wants to adopt a child and this is not something Karla is interested in doing.Lenny is the adopted child. He is a n'eer do well with a history of drug addiction and several stints in rehab. He is Audrey's favorite, the one who she loves the most. She is enmeshed with him and is a great enabler, not helping him with his attempts to get clean and sober. In fact, she gives him money when she knows he'll be using it to buy drugs. She even smokes dope in from of him when he is desperately trying to remain clean and sober.Joel is languishing in a coma and Audrey is resistant to turning off life support. All of a sudden, a secret is exposed that threatens the integrity of the family's beliefs about themselves. As readers, we are privy to the hypocrisies that abound before this secret. They, however, are not. How they deal with this secret, this new information, makes for an interesting situation.This book is filled with complexities along with sympathetic yet unlikable characters. We are torn between laughing at them or laughing with them. I found myself thinking that many situations reminded me of when I was a child and a friend fell off a bike. I inadvertently found myself laughing even though I didn't want to and even though I wanted to help my friend. It was an automatic response, almost like a hiccup. This book creates the same sought of deep and primitive responses that arise before the facade of civilization has the time to sieve and sort. This is a grand book by a brilliant author.
—Bonnie Brody
