Shmutz by Felicia Berliner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is my book club's April selection.
Raizl is a Hasidic Jewish young woman (I would say most similar to Satmar, though her sect is not named) who yearns to please her family through marriage and her hard work at a jewelers, in the accounting department. But she has a problem: she's addicted to hardcore pornography. And though she has tried to quit, she can't seem to stay away permanently from the "videos." As such, she's not sure she CAN get married, leading her secret life every night. As she tries to work it out with a therapist, Raizl begins exploring the world at the college where she's taking accounting classes and she realizes there's a whole big world out there that she may want to explore.
This book is such an original take on teenage rebellion in the Hasidic world, though it's probably more common than we know. It also makes you think about how things like sexual repression and gender segregation affect young people in such communities. Can it turn out with healthy attitudes about sex and sexuality? Or is something like this bound to happen? And how can these young people handle their feelings and the guilt that goes along with it? This book handles all those questions with humor and heart; never making fun of its subject, but drawing you into her world and getting you to root for her.
The porn descriptions were graphic, but I didn't think they were over the top or that there were too many. I mean, it's a book about a girl with a porn addiction, there's bound to be some. But the author didn't overuse them, IMO, and she played the scenes to show Raizl's feelings and POV, which was powerful and interesting.
The ending was interesting and I enjoyed seeing a unique perspective. I won't spoil anything, but the author seems to let the character shine and choose her own path. I enjoyed that.
Overall, this was a great book for anyone who would enjoy a book with a unique perspective on the Hasidic community. I greatly enjoyed it.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment