The Believers
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. In the meantime Joel's children are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts. Disillusioned revolutionary Rosa...
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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. In the meantime Joel's children are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts. Disillusioned revolutionary Rosa has been drawn into the world of Orthodox Judaism. Karla, a devoted—and married—social worker hoping to adopt a child, is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper stand. Lenny, the ne'er-do-well, faces yet another relapse into heroin addiction. In the course of battling their own demons—and one another—the Litvinoffs must reexamine long-held articles of faith and decide what—if anything—they still believe in.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780061430206 (006143020X)
Publish date: March 3rd 2009
Publisher: Harper
Pages no: 352
Edition language: English
Category:
Novels,
European Literature,
British Literature,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
Literary Fiction,
Adult,
Family,
Religion,
Contemporary,
New York
http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2008/12/review-believers-by-zoe-heller.html
I surprised myself a bit with this one. I've lately started abandoning books that have unlikeable characters in them. This book has pretty much nothing but unlikeable characters, yet the writing was good enough that I was engaged, and wanted to see what would happen to the characters. Some of the...
Aaaah. 5 stars. Wonderful. Sharp, funny, tight. One of the best of the year.
Ugh. Hateful people behaving hatefully.
One hundred pages in. I have often thought of Jane Austen as a bit too straitjacketed for my tastes, but you can always see--hell, you can feel--a ferocious rage at the hypocrisies and inanities and horrid behaviors of society, but coupled with a capacious compassion for all fools and foolishness. ...