annecater
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Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Posts: 1629
Location: Lincolnshire
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 Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject: The Believers by Zoe Heller |
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Synopsis
When Audrey makes a devastating discovery about her husband, New York radical lawyer Joel Litvinoff, she is forced to re-examine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling secret themselves, but for the meantime they are trying to cope with their own dilemmas.
Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, is grappling with a newfound attachment to Orthadox Judaism. Karla, an unhappily married social worker, is falling in love with an unlikely suitor at the hospital where she works. Adopted brother Lenny is back on drugs again.
In the course of battling their own demons and each other, every member of the family is called upon to decide what - if anything - they still believe in.
It's been five years since Zoe Heller wrote Notes On A Scandal, and after reading The Believers I do believe it was well worth the wait. Heller is a genius at creating obnoxious characters, who are hateful and totally unlikeable yet spinning an unputdownable story at the same time.
The Believers opens when Audrey and Joel first meet in London and then moves quickly to New York in 2002, they have now been married for 40 years and the story really starts from there.
Joel is a very succesful, out-spoken New York lawyer and Audrey has been his dutiful and very outspoken wife for all these years. When Joel is taken very ill and the family discover his secret, they all start to examine how they feel about themselves and each other.
The whole family are very brittle and extremely disfunctional - with no likeable or warm characters amongst them, yet you still need to know what they will do next. Audrey, the mother is a particularly nasty piece of work and her outbursts of bad language and un PC comments are kind of delightful in her own way! The whole family hate each other and hate themselves and each one them questions their beliefs and views throughout the book.
This is totally absorbing and very compelling, but, I do feel that it may become a 'Marmite' book - you will either love it or hate it.
I loved it - I hope it's not another five years before her next book
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Currently reading: The Tent The Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy and Granny The Pag by Nina Bawden
1001 Challenge Books read in 2009 - 3
1001 Challenge Books read in 2008 - 8
1001 Challenge Books read in 2007 - 13 |
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