Review of Sonia Taitz's The Watchmaker's Daughter

When I posted some thoughts yesterday while reading The Watchmaker's Daughter by Sonia Taitz, I didn't think I'd be writing my review of the memoir the following day. The book wasn't a page turner in the traditional sense, but because I had connection after connection to Taitz's descriptions of her life experiences, it was a very quick read for me.

I gave the book 4-stars on Goodreads. I really enjoyed the book but I'd recommend it conditionally. If only I could think of the conditions! As I went to mark The Watchmaker's Daughter as finished and make note of my stars on Goodreads, one of the reviews caught my attention. Someone likened this memoir to another quite different memoir, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Perhaps The Watchmaker's Daughter does have a wider appeal than I can imagine. I hesitate to read online reviews prior to writing my own review post here, but I do plan on going back to read through more of the reviews as soon as I've published this blog entry.

Here are excerpts of one of my favorite chapters in the book. The chapter is titled The Jewess at Last. Sonia is visiting the parents of her Christian Oxford boyfriend. She includes this conversation as she's reflecting on how it feels to be slighted as a Jew, a mere fraction of the slights (can you even describe being in a concentration camp as being a slight?) which were her parents' realities while living in Europe. She feels she now has something in common with her parents and that she can confront the nightmares their stories have instilled in her. Anyway, I digress.

Paul's father, Rikki (an old Boy Scout/Kipling nickname he favors), goads me now

 and then. He loves how angry and pointed I get about these little slights, how I get 

wound up like a desperate, talking doll. He is proud of being a white 

Anglo Saxon Protestant, better than anyone no matter what I say about his cultural myopia. 

Eventually, I come up with a parallel that nags at him. It's kind of an SAT analogy.

"England is to America as Judaism is to Christianity."

"So, you'd equate England and - and Judaism?"

"Yes," I say. "England is the root of the English speaking empire which, you would agree,

has popularized and cheapened its original quality. Look at American culture," I bait him.

"That's true. It's god-awful."

"So that's how you could see Judaism vis-a-vis  Christianity. One is small and old-fashioned

and riddled with rules and customs, and the other far more popular, with a simpler message

and more universal appeal." 

"Well," he says, "doesn't 'universal appeal' tell you something? There must be something to it if 

everyone  believes in it. That's why, despite the occasional whisper of doubt, I'm a Christian. -

sheer numbers can't be wrong."

"Well, according to your logic, McDonald's is better than a three-star Michelin restaurant. More

people eat at McDonald's."

"Oh, be quiet," he says grumpily... 

I don't want to bore you with all the connections I was able to make. They filled nearly 6 pages in a composition notebook. 

Some of the connections were completely personal. 

• Goofus and Gallant, those familiar characters from Highlights magazine
• A Rabbi Lichtiger (the same name as a rabbi from the yeshiva near my house growing up) reminding young Sonia that "God loves questions."
• Dressing up like Queen Esther, like nearly every other girl
• Judaism being so normal (and by my experience, much easier) in Israel

Some connected me to my Holocaust surviving former in-laws. And still others connected me to the immigrant existence that my husband and his parents lived after they left their homeland of Sicily to settle in the United States. Ironic how their experiences were so vastly different, but that I can list some of the stronger connections I picked up on together. Taken directly from the book:

• What did the phrase just a kid mean to someone like my father?
  He had never been just a kid.
• Immigrant parents who worry and sigh...

I'm sure many readers will recognize the coming to terms with who their parents were once they become adults and even more so once they become parents themselves.

Now I will wait patiently for my Books and Beer Club meeting, more than 3 weeks away. I just hope that my notes jog my memory enough so that I can bring up the points about the memoir that seem so important to me now.

Again, stay tuned...