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Sep 27, 2008

Lurgy and Zoe Heller

I've got the lurgy - it's been brewing all week and finally here it is. I'm fighting with all the ammo in my medicine cabinet, lockets, alka seltzer (here they're for colds not hangovers I'll never quite get used to that) and some rather spiffy Robitussin which I took last night and it worked better than Night nurse or Bennalin. I was out cold - until about 10.30 this morning.

I've just read Zoe Heller's new book and while I liked it I was reading from the whodunnit perspective so of course Joel had to be banging Daniel - wrong!!!!! It's nicely written and there's a review below but the thing I learned from this book is that I couldn't ever be Jewish - all those rules!

The Believers – Zoe Heller

Heller introduces us to the Litvinoff family at a crisis point. Joel, the head of the family suffers a stroke at the start of an important trial in a New York courtroom. His wife Audrey calls her son and two daughters to his bedside. In between battling with the Doctors over her husband’s medical care and wrestling with her conscience over keeping him alive Audrey learns that Joel had a mistress – she was tolerant of his many affairs – but this mistress had a son which Joel has secretly been supporting and the family has its own troubles.

Lenny the recovering drug addict may have fallen off the wagon again. Barren Karla, dieting social worker whose husband Mike is so desperate to foist an adoption on her that’s he pushing her towards another man. And finally Rosa, whose radical atheist upbringing means that her work with disadvantaged African American kids should be ideal. But instead she feels a pull towards her Jewish roots and beings to explore her denied faith.

A complex study of nature over nurture in post 9/11 New York.

I've got the new Guillermo Martinez to read over the weekend we'll see how that goes and I plan on doing some writing tonight. Chris is out at the airport taking night shots and then he's going on a ride-along in South Jordan.

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