My Love and Hate for Daylight Savings and Love and Religion in I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits

Time change today--which I love and hate all at the same time. Losing an hour in the morning is tough, but an extra hour of daylight is nice. Because they had to get up early (I made them go to 9:00 am Mass, which felt like 8:00 am), my girls have gone to bed pretty easily. It was also beautiful today in Central Ohio, so that made the lost hour seem worth it if it meant an extra hour of sunshine.

I walked the dog, watched the girls play outside, hit the gym and did some preparations for the upcoming lacrosse season for the older daughter. Dad is coaching this year, so he gets to be the driver for this particular sport. I get to be the team secretary and the biggest cheerleader, which is perfect for me!

This week I finished an awesome novel, I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits. It was a great look into the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community, a very insular group of incredibly religious people. The author grew up in the Hasidic world but fled it for personal freedom and education, so she writes from experience and from her heart. Here are my thoughts on the story:

"God torments the few who do not sin to permit them to reach a higher station in the next world." 

I know very little about the Jewish Hasidic community, and nothing about the Satmar Hasidic Jews. The big hats, the side curls and the women trailing behind the men--this was about all I knew. To me they seemed liked the Amish of the Jewish world.

Anouk Markovits gives a glimpse into this world. She opens a window just a little, uncovering a world of extremes. Things we take for granted, like reading books, are forbidden to this community, and for the women the list is longer. The world is fraught with peril; a trip outside of the community could mean meeting a non-Jewish man, spying a statue of a saint or glimpsing the symbol of a pagan god.  A wife is required to keep track of her clean and unclean days, which are marked with a ritual bath after which she is declared 'kosher' and ready for 'relations' with her husband. They definitely cannot visit the library and cannot read a Goyim newspaper. News outside the community is definitely forbidden.

I Am Forbidden’s focal point is the Satmar, a very isolated, very regulated Hasidic Jewish sect. The story spans pre-World War II to modern times, following two orphan’s intermingled lives from Transylvania to Paris to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is a tragic love story stemming from people trying to do the right thing, make each other happy and follow Hasidic law--a feat which is not easy and usually makes all parties unhappy.

There is no gray in the Satmar community--there is black and white, man and woman, married and unmarried, clean and unclean, Godly and worldly. What is right and what is Holy aren’t always in harmony, and this torments the characters. The characters live with memories of the Holocaust and the troubling thought that their leader may have bargained with Nazi leaders to save his own life while not saving his community.

Author Anouk Markovits grew up in a Hasidic home, leaving it for a life of freedom and expression. She knows of what she writes, and I wonder how much of this book comes from her life. You feel the pain she felt, and understand what went into her decision to leave. This book was lovely, sad, tragic and beautiful. It isn't often that a book and make you feel deeply and teach you something all at the same time. I definitely recommend this book.

Get I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits for Kindle from Amazon

Dysfunction comes home--Jennifer Anya Blau does a good job in Drinking Closer to Home, especially at $1.99 for the Kindle edition!

"She understands suddenly that the stuff that fills her up is not the love or attention she might get from other people; it is the love she herself has for other people."

"Marriage isn't a charming little tête-à-tête between a couple in love. It's an arrangement in a tiny unified county of two citizen, with a constitution that is in constant negotiation."

In Drinking Closer to Home, Jessica Anya Blau shows us that dysfunction we get from our parents are only their reactions to the dysfunction they got from their parents. I enjoyed this book, if only because it made me feel like the dysfunction I inherited from my parents isn't nearly as bad as what Buzzy and Louise passed down to their children.

Anna, Portia and Emery are the adult children of Buzzy and Louise who descend on their Santa Barbara ranch when Louise suffers a massive heart attack. The spend the time reminiscing, remember the hurts and triumphs of their lives, from childhood to the near-past.

The family starts off as a upper-middle class family in Ann Arbor, Michigan, living in the kind of neighborhood that is so normal it has to be abnormal behind closed doors. And it is, although Buzzy and Louise seem to be the most normal--at least at that time.

The family packs up and moves across the country for Buzzy's career, landing in California. They move into a picture perfect house with a pool and a lemon orchard. All is wonderful until the moment Louise "quits" as a mom. She quits cleaning, cooking, doing laundry and caring for the children, including baby Emery, whose care she entrusts to Portia. All the children grow up dirty--I think this is what got me the most. Louise begins 'etching' and writing poetry, and Buzzy cultivates marijuana, something he takes great pride in but doesn't smoke. He leaves that to Louise.

I think this is where the book lost my heart. I did not like Louise very much until she is much older. She lives in a completely self-centered world, dropping motherhood like it was an adult education class. Those of us that are mothers may drop responsibilities for a day or two, but could never abandon my children to themselves to indulge my whims. And Buzzy lets it happen. It seems with the money he makes he could hire a nanny/housekeeper, but he just leaves the kids to fend for themselves. And Emery grows up without a mother or a father.

We meet Buzzy's parents, an Orthodox Jewish family who comes to California once a year. They love the girls and Louise (who converted for the marriage and was Sarah for awhile and is the best Kosher cook they know), and really cannot stand poor Emery. This is the only time the house is orderly and clean, an act put on purely for Zeyde and Bubbe.

We also meet Louise's parents, a couple that lives in bucolic Vermont (I love the vision of their house). They are portrayed as completely backasswards, but you kind of like them for it. Otto, Louise's dad, believes that all children born after the first are only backups in case something happens to the oldest, so all the love and affection is poured into the oldest. Anna is adored, Portia is tolerated and Emery is ignored.

As we go through the children's lives and arrive at their adult selves, we realize that the more attention the children got from their parents and grandparents the more screwed up they are. Anna is really a mess, Portia less so (really desperate for love and attention, but in a healthy? way) and Emery is the most stable (probably because he never had any attention or any need of it, he embraced his homosexuality and made it fit into his life in a time when it wasn't quite as acceptable).
I guess if Buzzy and especially Louise were checked though out, they all would have been a little more functional.

That said, the ending is very poignant and did make me laugh and tear up. They are a family and come together when necessary, although PLEASE tell me I haven't messed up my kids this bad.

The characters are well developed and you do care about them. They reminisce with humor and emotion. Again, I liked this book. I just couldn't get past Louise's total lack of motherly feelings--and this brought the book down a notch.


I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it. Especially at $1.99 for my Kindle!

Drinking Closer to Home at Amazon.com

Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel by SJ Watson

“It’s so difficult, isn’t it? To see what’s going on when you’re in the absolute middle of something? It’s only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.”

(This was a debut novel in June, 2011 and out in paperback a year ago. I read it then and LOVED it!!!)

I was not expecting much from the book as it was a debut novel, but I was incredibly, pleasantly surprised that Before I Go to Sleep is SJ Watson's first novel. I was not surprised to learn it is in development to be adapted into a movie. A little more research told me that this book had been highly reviewed in Booklist and Kirkus. It has what a story needs to make it a blockbuster, as long as Hollywood doesn't tweak it too much.

It begins with Christine waking up in a stranger's bed, unsure of how she got there. She believes she is in her 20's. But soon she learns that her bed mate is not a stranger, but is instead her husband Ben, that she is middle aged and doesn't remember a thing from the last 20 or so years. She has a very rare form of amnesia, and day-to-day memories are lost. She slowly processes all this, finding a journal that she writes to herself every day to help her remember. And the biggest shocker in this journal? A note written to herself with the pronunciation--"Don't Trust Ben!"

Readers unravel the mystery the same way Christine does, with the help of her journal. Every day she starts from square one, discovering what she has learned the days and weeks before with the help of her journal. You start to question reality and how we look at it. What is reality? Is it what people believe goes on or is it what really goes on? Is it the public face we put on or is it what goes on behind closed doors? And do we really want to know what goes on behind closed doors or are we happy with the reality we have created for our friends, our neighbors, ourselves?

This read, and the ride it takes us on, is mesmerizing and exciting, thrilling and gripping. The end does not disappoint. I highly recommend this book, and look forward to more books by Watson.

NOTE: I read pretty much everything in Kindle editions, so from now on I will only tell you what format I'm reading IF it isn't Kindle. I usually read on my Kindle Fire HD. I try to highlight my favorite quotes as I read, and will add them into my reviews for a little spice.