The Believers by Zoe Heller

The back cover of The Believers by Zoe Heller introduces the book thus: “When a stroke fells radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff, a secret is revealed that forces Audrey, his wife, to reexamine everything she believed about their forty year marriage.” I was able to guess from reading this description what his secret was – I bet you can too. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite so obvious from reading the beginning of the book that something was going on, so I think that the fact that this was included on the book’s cover is a bit of a disappointment. There is potential for the family’s revelation to be a big surprise, and some crafty re-wording could have prevented this giveaway.

But I don’t want to dwell too much on my qualms here, because it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the novel, and it is at least quite descriptive of the plot. Though Joel’s wife Audrey does little to continue her life as Joel lingers in a coma, their children do move forward. By the end of the novel, the family isn’t really revolving around their absent father anymore; rather, each child has been subtly influenced by his illness.

Based on the title, I mistakenly believed that this book would be more about the religious beliefs of the family. While that does play a part in the story, I have since interpreted The Believers as referring to a much broader kind of belief. The characters reconsider their beliefs on family, lifestyle, love, death, and yes, religion.

Audrey spends most of the novel acting angry and cruel, with rare moments of affection and sympathy bestowed upon her loved ones. Even though her outbursts are often shocking, I think this is how I prefer her to act. After all that happens in the course of the book, if Audrey isn’t a little bit justified in acting like a jerk, I don’t know who is. If her nasty remarks make me uncomfortable, it’s probably just because I’m a little jealous that she can get away with it. Near the end of the story, she seems to regret her harsh past, but I don’t.

On Beauty (& many other things)

Without knowing much about the setting of On Beauty by Zadie Smith, I began reading it around the same time that I read Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies. The settings are very similar - both take place in small town liberal arts colleges; much of the main action of both books has to do with the infidelity of the husband/father. Beyond this, the books are not especially similar, but I may be doomed to think of the two as a pair based on the coincidence that I just described. The main difference between the two books was that I thought On Beauty was interesting, clever and enjoyable.

Even though Smith does talk a great deal about beauty in this novel, it could just as easily be called, On Race, On Class or On Marriage. Or any number of other titles. The Belsey family is made up of the parents and three children. Howard is the father, a professor of art history who originally comes from England. The mother, Kiki is a black woman from Atlanta who works at a local hospital. Jerome is the oldest son - the only Christian in a family of atheists. The daughter Zora is determined to be successful intellectually, but ends up being overbearing and commandeering more often than not. The youngest son, Levi, spends most of the novel trying to figure out what it means to be black in a small town with a very small black community.

I spend so much time explaining the unique positions of each of the family members, because I think the fact that their situations are so dramatically different is what makes the novel interesting. As mentioned before, the father's infidelity is crucial to the plot, as is the arrival of one of his professional rivals on the college campus, but, in my opinion, these events really just serve to illustrate the way that honesty, love and loyalty work in this culturally, emotionally, spiritually diverse family.

I'm very interested in novelists who don't seem to be concerned with whether or not their main characters are likable. Even though I haven't heard or read anything that describes Smith's own feelings on this subject, if I had to guess, I would say that she is more interested in making her characters realistic and believable. This doesn't necessarily mean that the characters aren't likable, just that they frequently do things that make the reader cringe. I consider it a mark of success on the part of the storyteller when I feel genuinely embarrassed for her characters.

Luckily, the book is fiction, so no matter what happens on the page, I can remind myself that these people didn't actually have to suffer these humiliations & heartbreaks. And if they survive, then us real folk probably can too.

Review: Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

I was really excited to read the book Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies. And not just because of an attractive cover or prominent display. I saw a recommendation on NPR - other NPR recommendations have been very enjoyable. I have lived in Ohio my entire life and this memoir is set in Oberlin, Ohio; I try to seek out literature from or about Ohio. It is also a non-fiction book by a female author. I sort of knew what the book was about, and was expecting an uplifting story about a strong woman.

Here’s the gist of the book: Isabel Gillies and her husband have a very dramatic relationship. They have two kids. Gillies moves from New England to Ohio with her husband who is a poetry professor. After a while, he meets and falls in love with one of the other professors at Oberlin. They separate. Don’t worry, I haven’t just given away the entire book, this is all mentioned at the beginning.

It sounds like I’m leaving out a lot, but I’m really not. When I got to page 17 of this 250+ page book, I set the book down and said to myself “How on earth will she manage to stretch this into a book length memoir?” The author must have also been wondering how she could fill up the remainder of her book. She seems to have settled on descriptions of designer apparel and home décor items, but she also includes repetitive memories of her privileged upbringing and expressions of amazement at the fact that Ohio is actually a nice place to live.

I don’t know whether I could briefly sum up the aspects of this book that bothered me. The voice of the novel just really began to irritate me. She struck me as being a frantic, needy, hypersensitive woman who defined herself solely based on appearances and her husband’s status. But it may just be that I don’t relate well to woman and I’m not really the right audience for the book. Maybe a different kind of person would find this more to their liking.

For a more enjoyable book about a philandering professor at a small Liberal Arts college, try Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. It isn’t non-fiction, but I found it much more interesting than Happens Every Day.