Comments (0)The Believers
June 12, 2009Barbara Pash
Associate Editor
Zoe Heller
Harper 2009, 336 pages (hardcover), $25.95
The year was 2002; the setting, Manhattan. Joel Litvinoff, 60-ish, was a noted lawyer of the radical left. If there was an unpopular cause, Joel was sure to be in the forefront. As depicted in Zoe Heller’s third novel, Joel doesn’t mind being routinely vilified in the press. On the contrary, it has brought him fame, stroked his ego and enabled him to live a comfortable life in his townhouse in Greenwich Village.
But the reader only gets a glimpse of this arrogant yet idealistic man because shortly after the book begins, he suffers a massive stroke, lapses into a coma and eventually dies. The story really revolves around Joel’s wife, Audrey, their now-adult children and the discovery of Joel’s longtime mistress.
Both Joel and Audrey are Jewish, but long ago rejected their religion. Audrey has made a career of being the Great Man’s wife. She may not be as bright or as accomplished as Joel was, but she is a believer in the “cause,” whatever it may be, even coming up with a theory to justify the 9/11 attacks on America.
Although Joel seems to have tried to be a good father, Audrey makes no pretense of being a good mother. She is indifferent, even cold, to their two biological daughters, Karla and Rosa, saving her affection for Lenny, the son of imprisoned terrorists, an out-of-work drug addict whom she and Joel have raised.
It is hard to be sympathetic with the self-righteous, mean-spirited Audrey, who becomes increasingly nasty as Joel’s secret life unfolds. Meanwhile, Karla, ignored, overweight and stuck in a loveless marriage, finds happiness in an affair with a Muslim newsstand owner. Rosa finds meaning to her life in Orthodox Judaism, much to Audrey’s horror. After a brief period of “clean” living, Lenny returns to his drugged-out ways.
One reviewer praised “The Believers” as a “juicy satire full of complex characters … and disturbing choices.” This reviewer found the characters predictably one-sided and the plot more unbelievable than not.