Most of the story is set in New York in 2002 after an initial brief prologue in London 40 years before when Leo and Audrey meet and are immediately attracted to each other. Now, with two adult daughters, the lives of the four of them are challenged and changed in the course of a year. Heller has each of them face up to their own individual dilemmas, together with one that affects all four. Heller draws you into their lives, concentrating on the three women, as they struggle with their beliefs and to retain their family relationship with each other as events unfold. Heller explores the thought that parents may be able to set beliefs and standards for their children, but then they must expect that theses may be adapted or rejected in adulthood.

The unlikability of the characters in _The Believers_ is exactly why I found the book so entertaining. Audrey, the matriarch of the Litvikoff family, is so monstrous and cruel to the people around her that its a bit like reading a mental horror story. I never read _Notes on a Scandal_, but I saw the film, and Judi Dench could easily play Audrey as well.

A theme of this story involve beliefs that people have and the hypocrites they become in espousing these beliefs but not living up to them. Rosa's interest in Orthodox Judaism points to this hypocrisy, as when her rabbi tells her that her professed faith does not matter as much as her actions. This is the logic behind the onerous rules surrounding women's conduct; the only point is really to show commitment to the religion, the kind of commitment that Audrey is unable to make to the causes to which she has supposedly given her life, in that she treats everyone around her with contempt.

This is my definition of a good beach novel - reads like a melodrama, but with enough thematic meat on its bones to provoke discussion. Ugh, I guess Ayn Rand could fall into this category as well. ( )

קושיה לדרג את הספר הזה. מחד ספר קריא ביותר שחזרתי אליו בעניין וקראתי אותו מהר ובהנאה. הוא עוסק בהרבה מאד שאלות מרתקות - אמונה (דתית ופוליטי) הקשר בין הורות טובה לחיים מאושרים לילדים,איך חוזרים בתשובה, איך אנגלים נקלטים בארה"ב, ועוד ועוד. מצד שני - הרבה שאלות ומעט מאוד תשובות. אין תשובה במהלך הספר והסוף שלו שהוא כמעט טפשי עלוב במיוחד. אהבתי אותו יותר מספרה השני והמפורסם של זואי הלר, אבל יש לה עוד כברת דרך ללכת ( )

Ugh. I want to like this book but it’s a little too trite and it trades too easily in too many cliches. For example: the put upon, neglected daughter with weight and infertility issues, has an affair, while the adopted son with drug issues struggles with his demons, while the other socialist daughter channels her dissolution with social activism into the study of Judaism. And their mother is a terrible bitch.
Any three of those thoughts could be fully developed into a better book than the one I just read. ( )

‘The Believers’ by Zoe Heller is the story of a New York family and how serious illness challenges each person to consider in what they believe. The Litvinoffs are a Jewish family used by Heller as a prism to question our beliefs, not just religious but also motherhood, fidelity and politics.
The story starts with the meeting of English student Audrey and American lawyer Joel, at a party in London in the Sixties. The action then shifts swiftly to 2002. Audrey and Joel live in New York, he is a prominent and outspoken radical lawyer, she does good works. They have two daughters, Rose and Karla, and adopted son Lenny. On the day he is due to appear in court representing a controversial defendant, Joel has a stroke. As he lays in a coma, Heller shows each of the family confronting the situation, its impact on their own lives, or not as the case may be. None of the characters are particularly likeable, and the storyline can be difficult in places, but I found the pages turned quickly as I wanted to know the ending. Of course, like life, there is no neat finale only more life to follow as the stories of the family continue.
Audrey is a deliciously outspoken and brutal mother to her daughters, though she mollycoddles her son to a ridiculous degree. Rosa is re-discovering her Jewish roots, having been raised in a non-observant Jewish family. We follow her exploration of the oddities of Orthodoxy, as she wrestles with the concept of accepting things she doesn’t understand. Karla, unhappily married and trying for a baby, is the recipient most frequently of Audrey’s caustic tongue. Not looking for an affair, she nevertheless stumbles into one, and has difficulty believing and accepting her suitor could possibly be attracted to her. Lenny is a drug addict who believes in nothing except his next hit. Meanwhile, Joel in his hospital bed is the cog of the wheel around which they all move.
I was left loving Heller’s writing, she has a wonderful turn of phrase. ‘Depression, in Karla’s experience, was a dull, inert thing – a toad that squatted wetly on your head until it finally gathered the energy to slither off. The unhappiness she had been living with for the last ten days was quite a different creature. It was frantic and aggressive. It had fists and fangs and hobnailed boots. It didn’t sit, it assailed. It hurt her.’
But, I finished the book dissatisfied with the story. Audrey’s Englishness did not come into play, except in the first chapter which feels unrelated to the rest of the book, and she seems unnecessarily harsh and unfair without real justification. What made her so bitter? Something which happened between the Prologue in 1962, and the main story in 2002? The big surprise, when it comes, is perhaps predictable to everyone except Audrey.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ ( )