The Believers

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'The Believers'
by Zoe Heller
(Fig Tree/ Penguin)

Having dissected the obsessions of a spinster in 'Notes On A Scandal', Zoe Heller turns her forensic skills to wider family life in her new book 'The Believers'. The book explores what happens when the Litvinoffs are torn apart after Joel, the head of this New York family, has a stroke.

Audrey, the mother, struggles as everything around her begins to change. She resists these changes as contradicting the life choices she’s made, but then finds her theory and practice conflict as she’s unwilling to sign her husband’s ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ form. When subsequently confronted by secrets from Joel’s past, she begins to question everything she ever believed in.

Audrey is horrified when her daughter Rosa – just back from four years in Cuba and a lifetime of socialism and moral certainties – decides to focus her search for meaning by embracing the Orthodox Judaism of her forbears. Intellectually, Rosa herself can’t understand her need to do this, but she’s fallen in love with ritual and is slowly drawn in. Heller captures the young woman’s confusion between heart and head as she stumbles into faith quite beautifully.

Audrey’s other daughter Karla is questioning her sad and empty marriage. Heller describes the misery of IVF and Karla’s relationship with her body with great compassion. Her eventual blossoming into the belief that she might deserve love is compellingly written.

And, finally, there is Lenny, the adopted son who is locked in a world of drugs and dependency; a situation with which his mother seems largely comfortable. As he struggles to deal with his problems, Audrey has to learn to let him go.

Heller is fantastic at getting inside the heads of all these characters as they variously embrace and resist change. She describes the shifting alliances, the tensions of sibling rivalry, and the parent-child relationships in a way that will be recognizable to most.

'The Believers' is both a sharp and witty depiction of family, and an intelligent, thought-provoking look at what constitutes faith, meaning and transformation at different times of life.

- Hazel Marshall