Leaving Eastern Parkway

I am always intrigued by the hows and whys of very religious people, mostly Jews, who leave the fold. What was their thinking? Why did they leave? How did they leave? What was their transition like? Matthew Daub's debut novel, Leaving Eastern Parkway, fit the bill. It's the story of Zev, a young teen living as a Hasidic Jew in Brooklyn. Zev's sister has already left the Hasidic community so Zev lives alone with his mother and father.

Zev has a rebellious streak in him. He lives to play handball and he plays in a tournament one Shabbat rather than attending synagogue. Not only that, when he gets hungry, he eats a non-kosher hotdog. He figures he'll get in trouble when he gets home. When he gets home, though, a rabbi is sitting in his living room waiting to tell Zev that his father has been killed by a car while crossing the street. His distraught mother is with friends.

The rabbi has tracked down Zev's sister, Frida (like the artist Frida Kahlo) who used to be called by the Yiddish name, Frayda. She drives from Illinois to New York to attend the funeral. The morning after the funeral as she and Zev are preparing to sit shiva, they make the decision for Zev to accompany her back to Illinois. Right at that moment. Off they go. 

Growing up in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn leaves one very isolated. Education is limited to religious instruction and the very bare basics of secular studies. The community is very insular so Zev hasn't had any exposure to non-Hasids. He's never watched TV. He has no understanding of popular culture. It's nearly impossible to find kosher food in Urbana, Illinois. The only synagogue is a reform temple. Zev wonders if these people are even Jewish? When he arrives in Illinois, it's like an alien landing on Earth. There's so much he doesn't know and nothing seems familiar.

Even in his new home, all he wants to do is play handball. That becomes his connection to  the larger world. Through everything, though, even though Zev isn't sure what he believes in or doesn't believe in, he's determined to remain a Jew. He continues to wear a yalmulka. His explanation towards the end of the novel really struck home for me. I nodded my head thinking, "Yes. Yes. This is exactly it." (I had a conversation with myself in synagogue a few weeks ago that was remarkably similar.)

This novel isn't for everyone, but I really enjoyed it a lot and recommend it for the right person.
 

Looking for Jane

Heather Marshall's debut book, Looking for Jane, was so incredibly powerful. It's also incredibly timely, about women's right to choose.

This story jumps around quite a bit. The story is told from the perspectives of several characters over several time lines. It did get confusing at times, and after finishing the book, I still have a few questions about pieces of the story that didn't make sense or were never followed up.

But wow! I'd still highly recommend reading this novel. It takes place in Toronto so the restrictions to abortion are those that existed in Canada - and which are not currently under attack. Themes covered in the novel are the fight for right to choose, illegal abortions, adoption, artificial insemination, and motherhood.

The three main characters are Angela, Evelyn, and Nancy. Angela discovers a letter meant for Nancy, sent 7 years prior to the discovery of the mislaid letter. Angela goes in search of Nancy or the letter writer, Margaret. Including Margaret, the four women's stories are all interlinked. The connections are slowly revealed.

This is an important book to read now in the United States. It gives a good understanding about what life for women is heading back towards  now with the overturning of Roe.

 

The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights.

I liked Kitty Zeldis' latest historical fiction novel, The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights, but I only liked it. It was set in Brooklyn! I should have loved it!

I went back to see what type of rating I'd given to the first Kitty Zeldis novel I'd read, Not Our Kind, to see if I'd felt similarly. I did. But not for the same reasons.

I can't think of a concise way to describe what this novel is about. Bea is an "older" woman who has had to start over in life several times. First in New Orleans after she needs to leave Russia when things got tough for the Jews there. Then from New Orleans when her business is no longer practical. And then from Brooklyn, when all the secrets she has kept over the years start to unravel.

Bea moves north to Brooklyn with Alice, an orphan whom she'd taken in back in New Orleans. The two open an unique dress shop in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. (Hence the title of the book.)

Catherine is a woman living down the street from the dress shop. She's happily married and longing to have a baby.

The lives of the three women intersect and that's when the secrets start to be revealed.

What I enjoyed most about this book were the references to locations that I'm familiar with in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I loved reading about Alice and Bea's creative approach to designing dresses. What I didn't love was the character development. That combined with the way conflicts were addressed and resolved left me wanting for more.

I'm also not sure what relevance there was to Bea being Jewish. It was an integral part of the beginning of the story, it was brought up once or twice towards the middle of the book, but then never addressed. She could have been a displaced immigrant from anywhere.

Not a bad book, but nothing I'd strongly recommend. 

The Violin Conspiracy

 Brenda Slocumb is the author of the autobiographical fiction, The Violin Conspiracy. Fictional Ray loves playing the fiddle, much to his mother's consternation. She'd like nothing more than for Ray to get a job at a hospital cafeteria making minimum wage, helping to support the family. Ray, however, has a dream to be a professional musician. The only one who supports him in this dream is his grandmother.

His grandmother gifts him her grandfather's beat-up fiddle which turns out to be a priceless Stradivarius! Ray was a talented violinist but knowing that this the violin his grandfather played gives him a special spark. 

Ray is recruited to attend college on a music scholarship by a professor who does all she can to show him that his dream makes sense. She helps him conquer the racism that beleaguers the music world. Ray - and his Strad - take the music world by storm.

He's all set to compete in the Tchaikovsky Competition, the Olympics of classical music, when his violin is stolen from his case, with a ransom note - and a sneaker - in it's place. Ray suspects either his family - or the family that owned his great-great-grandfather when great-great-grandfather was a slave. But could it be someone else?

Slocumb cleverly knits the story together, taking us back in time. Will Ray every find his violin?

The novel allowed me to explore things I'd never thought of before, mostly involving race and being a musician as a career. I never really warmed up to Ray as a character, though. Is that why I only gave this one 3-stars on goodreads? Perhaps.

RBG's Brave & Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone

 Listening to Nadine Epstein's RBG's Brave & Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, written with input from Ruth Bader Ginsburg prior to her death in September 2020, was my nod to Women's History Month. 

RBG complied a list of over 100 Jewish women whom she found inspiring and the list got culled down to 33, due to time and printing constraints. Many of the women I'd heard about, several I had not. I learned new facts about those I was familiar with and those I wasn't. I am inspired!

This would be a great book to give to a young girl. Perhaps that's the target audience. Women (and men) of any age can enjoy it.

Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

I loved Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley. I listened to the audiobook while walking, but it really would be a great book to listen to while commuting. I think it would be laugh out loud funny if you were reading it on a train. Hey, you might make some friends on the commute.

Iona Iverson is a 57-year old "agony aunt" (don't tell her I called her that) who commutes into London every morning, sitting on the same train, in the same car, in the same seat, at the same table. With her dog, Lulu.

On a fateful day, a man Iona calls "Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader" (you know the type) chokes on a grape sitting right across from her. This event causes Iona to break some of her commuting rules. She reaches out to others trying to find someone to help the choking man. One thing leads to another and within a few weeks, Iona has her own commuting family.

The characters are well-developed and I enjoyed watching the relationships amongst those in the group evolve. I appreciated that Iona is an older woman trying to stay relevant in the modern, working world.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

 

I wish I could remember where I'd first heard about All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner. It's the true telling of the life of  Mildred Harnack, told by her great-great-niece. Harnack was the leader of the largest anti-Nazi resistance group in Germany. As an American. It was very likely that she was the only American in the German Resistance.

She immediately turned against Hitler as she observed his rise to power. She devoted herself to bringing him down, well before others were concerned about what a Hitler-led Germany might be like.

This book tells the tale of a heroic American woman. It was inspiring. But I found it even more disturbing. For sure. It  reaffirmed my conviction that yes, it can happen again, and it can happen here! There were so many parallels to what was going on in Germany in the 1930s and what is going on in the United States right now.

Here are a few quotes from the book, just to give you a taste. And I will leave it at that.

They're convinced that Germans will revolt against this lunatic politician. It's just a matter of time.

...

It's essentially impossible to find a condom in Berlin or anywhere else in Germany. Contraception was readily available in major cities by the end of the Weimar Republic. Vending machines dispensed condoms in men's public restrooms. Clinics provided free condoms. Now they're illegal.

...

Newspapers carry stories about German gynecologists facing criminal charges. Gynecologists may receive the death penalty if they are found guilty of terminating an unwanted pregnancy, but only if the woman is Aryan, "racially pure." There is no penalty for terminating the pregnancy of a woman who is "racially inferior."

...

At seventeen he joined Hitler Youth. The full name - Hitlerjugend, Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend (Hilter Youth, League of German Worker Youth) - emphasizes the poor, working-class origins of many of its recruits.

... 

 It is now a crime to criticize the Nazi government. The Malicious Practices Act prohibits Germans from expressing their disapproval about anything Hitler says or does. Even a joke could bring the Gestapo to your door. Newspapers and magazines that once lampooned the Nazi Party go silent.

...

The Circle discusses and debates - often heatedly - the central question: Stay or go? Stay and risk arrest, imprisonment, death? Go and abandon Germany to the Nazis, who are hell-bent on destroying it?

...

Every day, Nazi propaganda disseminates misinformation and false promises. Every day, Hitler wins more German hearts and minds. And it's all happening so fast.

...

We look upon the German movement for liberation and its leader, our Chancellor, as a gift of God! 

...

Predicting what will happen next is as alarming as it is inconceivable.

...

 Hitler orders the Ministry of Justice to retroactively legalize what has happened, promising to deliver a speech that will explain everything.

...

Gangsters. Germany is being governed by gangsters.

...

... the recognition that Germany isn't the country she once loved can't be avoided. The cruelty, the barbarity, the outright sadism, are horrifying. Still, she holds on to the hope that fascism can be fought.

...

Democracies seem to be toppling everywhere; iron-fisted dictators rule the day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone Else's Shoes

I love Jojo Moyes, but I don't think I was the target audience for Someone Else's Shoes. Just since starting this blog, I've read quite a few of the novels of Jojo Moyes so anticipated this release and assumed I'd be blown away. It was a quick, easy, nice read, but I think I would have enjoyed it more when I was a little bit younger. (Am I only jealous that I can't even imagine wearing six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes - because I wouldn't be able to stand in them, forget about walking?)

Someone Else's Shoes is the story of two women trying to figure out who they are. When Sam accidentally takes Nisha's gym bag, with her really expensive, kick ass high heel shoes... and starts wearing them... it enables her to start thinking about a Plan B for life. At the same time that Nisha needs to develop her own Plan B when her life is thrown into disarray.

The story is humorous, warm and relatable. Similar to some other books of this author, female friendship is in the forefront. We can do so much more when we're working together.


 

The Island of Missing Trees

I absolutely loved The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. It was so different from books that I've read recently - or perhaps ever. I highly recommend this one but with several caveats.

The overall basis of the story is conflict and war in Cyprus, a place I realize now that I didn't know that much about. So if trauma and war isn't something you like to read about, this might not be for you.

(It's also a coming of age story, a story about loss, love, family connections, history.)

A young Greek Cypriot meets a young Turkish Cypriot in a very divided island. They fall in love and pursue a relationship, difficult to do with such hatred between the two "sides." Their secret liaisons take place in a tavern called The Happy Fig.

There's (obviously) a fig tree not only at the tavern but inside. This fig tree, now transplanted to England, is one of the narrators to the story. So if you don't like inanimate narrators, this might not be for you. The fig shares not only her story but more information than you can imagine about trees, and fig trees, and nature than you can imagine! So if botany and nature isn't your thing, this might not be for you.

Yet... I loved it! 

Very early in the book, the fig tree (located in England) is being buried for the winter. I have heard so many stories over the years about my husband and his brothers being tasked with burying their father's fig tree just one winter when the father wasn't able to. And that story didn't end well. I'm not really a tree person. Imagine the love and dedication that is required to maintain a tree that needs such care, to be buried in the winter in cold climates and then dug up again in the spring. The Island of Missing Trees allowed me to understand how that might happen, especially when part of the immigrant experience.

There's also the question of inherited familial trauma, something that I think about with regards to my family from time to time. This book gave me a tremendous amount to think about.

Elif Shafak has a wonderful way with language and this tale was so creatively told.