The Believers by Zoe Heller

Release date: 2008 / 335 pages

Synopsis (from the back cover): 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.

First line: “At a party in a bedsit just off Gower Street, a young woman stood alone at the window, her elbows pinned to her sides in an attempt to hide the dark flowers of perspiration blossoming at the armholes of her dress.”

Review:  What a happy surprise this novel was to read — this time around!  I first attempted The Believers early last year, soon after returning home from Ethiopia with my new niece, but had to return it to the library after only the first few pages. I wasn’t left with much of an impression, largely due to the extenuating circumstances of frightful jet lag and a busy schedule.

So, when I was contacted by TLC Tours to read and review The Believers, I wondered if my foggy first-impressions were simply a result of exhaustion, or if the narrative hadn’t sustained my attention for some reason.  Well, this time around I simply loved the novel right from the very first few pages.  I was immediately struck by how vividly Heller creates a character and a scene through the use of gesture and description.  I can’t recall ever noticing an author’s use of “gesture” before, but Heller’s attention to this quickly resulted in an intimate knowledge of the characters immediately — a knowledge that held true through a 40 year flash-forward.  I kept thinking, “Yes, that’s exactly how the 20-something Audrey would behave as a 58 year old!  Perfect…”

The brief, initial section that precedes the first chapter occurs in London in 1962 and describes the first meeting of a soon-to-be married couple, an act that changes their lives forever (especially Audrey’s).  The remaining narrative occurs in New York City in 2002.  As I often recommend, please do not judge this novel on the plot summary blurb.  This novel is so much more than what is described above — and the blurb isn’t entirely true, either.  Any soul-searching Audrey does is fleeting and insignificant, true to her ornery, delightful, self-righteous character.

And “character” she is!  I simply loved the characterization of this novel. I felt as if I actually had met each character (I would think — “Audrey is just like so-and-so!”  “I remember Rosa in college!”).  I was shocked to read in the  supplemental material at the end that Heller has “been described as an author who specializes in ‘unlikable characters’”!  I liked each of the complex, tortured, well-meaning characters very much.  Each individual is so authentic — and therefore we see them at their best and worst.  She allows us to witness their internal and external lives — so we not only are privvy to how each of the characters view each other, but to the motivation for their actions and beliefs as well.

I also loved that while the setting of NYC was palpable, Heller somehow avoided the needed to glorify the city beyond reason or patience. So rare, and her novel was so much stronger for portraying NYC as a complex, beautiful, ugly, difficult place that is like no other.

Beyond the characterization, thematic elements, and setting, Heller’s diction is priceless!  I so love novels that include words like “uxorious” (excessively submissive or devoted to one’s wife ), “termagant” (quarrelsome, scolding woman), and “insouciance” (one of those words we really should know and can riddle out from context — carefree).  Here are a few samples of Heller’s writing:

“Her reply was a little reluctant — she was not as used to treating herself as a topic of conversation as he was — but she seemed to give up the facts truthfully enough.”

“It was as he thought. She was without distinction. This female dignity, unsupported by status or money, was a wondrous act of levitation, to be sure. But he was anxious to have it done with now — to be told the trick of it. A girl who could never be talked down to would be a little exhausting in the long run.”

“Adopting seven-year-old Lenny was no mere act of bourgeois philanthropy, he had maintained, but a subversive gesture — a vote for an enlightened, “tribal” system of childrearing that would one day supersede the repressive nuclear unit although. Lenny, however, had proved to be an uncooperative participant in the tribal program.”

“Married life was like good health: there was no bloody point to it if you could not occasionally abuse it, or take it for granted.”

“It was as if suffering had become so integral to her identity that the prospect of any real, material improvement in her life would pose a threat to her deepest sense of self: she had invested her entire personhood on a horse called Put-Upon, and she was damned if she was going to change her bet now.”

“Karla watched her scanning the gerund-heavy nonfiction titles: Mindful Eating, Writing the Body, Understanding Gynocritical Theory, Reading Tarot.

Thematically, Heller succintly sums up one of the guiding principles of this novel: “…all forms of belief, including atheism, tend to have a nonlogical, purely emotional component.”  How Audrey would hate that statement, yet how true it is…

If you are interested in winning a copy, simply leave me a comment and I’ll choose a lucky winner by Saturday! Like to hear more about this novel?

Curious about what others thought?

Here’s the full list of TLC tour stops!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010: Lit and Life

Tuesday, January 26, 2010: Raging Bibliomania

Wednesday, January 27, 2010: Steph and Tony Investigate!

Thursday, January 28, 2010: Life in the Thumb

Wednesday, February 10, 2010: A Reader’s Respite

Thursday, February 11, 2010: The Brain Lair

Monday, February 15, 2010: Book Club Classics!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010: lit*chick

Wednesday, February 17, 2010: Sasha and the Silverfish

Thursday, February 18, 2010: Nonsuch Book

Date TBD: Write for a Reader

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