Book: The believers
Sep. 2nd, 2009 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Zoë Heller
Details: (c) Zoë Heller 2008; Pub 2009 Penguin; ISBN 0141024674
Verdict: The Believers is mostly depressing and annoying.
Reasons for reading it: It's the next book that is going to be discussed in the Jewish book discussion group here, and that can be a fun event so I'd like to come prepared.
How it came into my hands: My parents are being very virtuous at buying the book club's choices every month, so I was able to borrow it from them.
The Believers falls squarely into the genre of mimetic fiction; it's about some upper middle class New Yorkers having various bits of relationship angst and midlife crises. It's competently written, and it covers some fairly original issues and sources of angst, but the problem is that the characters are not so much flawed as they are so relentlessly unpleasant that I had a hard time caring about any of them. I definitely like books that are character-centred, but I had a hard time finishing this one.
I think in some ways it may be intended as satire, as there is a universal theme of people who make being "Progressive" a huge part of their identity, but don't do a very good job of treating actual less fortunate people with respect, let alone making the world a better place for them. I am very unwilling to enter into a compact with an author based on feeling smugly superior to the characters, and Heller seems to invite the reader to do so. That said, she does display some sympathy for her characters, especially the women, the mother and two adult daughters, who are unpleasant, but you see enough of their viewpoint to understand that a lot of it is a reaction to the bad situations and unfairness that they are dealing with.
Audrey in particular is interesting, with her horror at the way that the defence mechanisms she used when she was young, female and working class have taken over her personality and led to her hurting the people she cares about. Karla is annoying and whiny and so on, but it's still possible to feel sympathy for the way she's despised by everyone, including her own parents, for being fat. The Rosa thread was the least appealing to me; she goes through a midlife rebellion consisting of giving up being an ineffectual though passionate lefty and decides to become an Orthodox Jew instead. Heller has clearly done her research and presents the Orthodox world with a lot of accurate and convincing detail. She's neither romantic nor judgemental about that way of life, but mocks and sympathizes with the Orthodox characters in the same way she handles her secular protagonists. (She hasn't bothered even finding out what Reform Judaism is, just assuming that it's wishy-washy and pointless, but hey, I can't expect a fictional novel to cover everything.)
The main plot, with Audrey's husband Joel suffering a stroke he never comes round from, leaving Audrey to deal with his agonizingly slow death and the revelation that one of his many affairs was actually serious, didn't grab me at all. It could have been a clever hook for exploring the characters' reactions and personalities, or it could have presented big questions about what love and marriage mean, how to understand old age and mortality, and so on, but it never quite reaches either of those two. Instead the book just seems like a slice of life of some believable but unlovable characters, producing a reaction of "so what?"
Details: (c) Zoë Heller 2008; Pub 2009 Penguin; ISBN 0141024674
Verdict: The Believers is mostly depressing and annoying.
Reasons for reading it: It's the next book that is going to be discussed in the Jewish book discussion group here, and that can be a fun event so I'd like to come prepared.
How it came into my hands: My parents are being very virtuous at buying the book club's choices every month, so I was able to borrow it from them.
The Believers falls squarely into the genre of mimetic fiction; it's about some upper middle class New Yorkers having various bits of relationship angst and midlife crises. It's competently written, and it covers some fairly original issues and sources of angst, but the problem is that the characters are not so much flawed as they are so relentlessly unpleasant that I had a hard time caring about any of them. I definitely like books that are character-centred, but I had a hard time finishing this one.
I think in some ways it may be intended as satire, as there is a universal theme of people who make being "Progressive" a huge part of their identity, but don't do a very good job of treating actual less fortunate people with respect, let alone making the world a better place for them. I am very unwilling to enter into a compact with an author based on feeling smugly superior to the characters, and Heller seems to invite the reader to do so. That said, she does display some sympathy for her characters, especially the women, the mother and two adult daughters, who are unpleasant, but you see enough of their viewpoint to understand that a lot of it is a reaction to the bad situations and unfairness that they are dealing with.
Audrey in particular is interesting, with her horror at the way that the defence mechanisms she used when she was young, female and working class have taken over her personality and led to her hurting the people she cares about. Karla is annoying and whiny and so on, but it's still possible to feel sympathy for the way she's despised by everyone, including her own parents, for being fat. The Rosa thread was the least appealing to me; she goes through a midlife rebellion consisting of giving up being an ineffectual though passionate lefty and decides to become an Orthodox Jew instead. Heller has clearly done her research and presents the Orthodox world with a lot of accurate and convincing detail. She's neither romantic nor judgemental about that way of life, but mocks and sympathizes with the Orthodox characters in the same way she handles her secular protagonists. (She hasn't bothered even finding out what Reform Judaism is, just assuming that it's wishy-washy and pointless, but hey, I can't expect a fictional novel to cover everything.)
The main plot, with Audrey's husband Joel suffering a stroke he never comes round from, leaving Audrey to deal with his agonizingly slow death and the revelation that one of his many affairs was actually serious, didn't grab me at all. It could have been a clever hook for exploring the characters' reactions and personalities, or it could have presented big questions about what love and marriage mean, how to understand old age and mortality, and so on, but it never quite reaches either of those two. Instead the book just seems like a slice of life of some believable but unlovable characters, producing a reaction of "so what?"
