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WASHING THE DEAD

Name: WASHING THE DEAD
Author: Michelle Brafman
ISBN: 978-1-938849-51-0

by Michelle Brafman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2015

Sincere but long-winded, Brafman’s story cycles through a limited range of emotional chords, to numbing effect.

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After decades spent suppressing sad and angry feelings toward her mother for adultery and the destruction of her childhood happiness, it’s time for anguished Barbara Blumfield to make peace with her parent and herself.

The pendulum swings, slowly, from toxic rage and instability to all-embracing forgiveness in Brafman’s debut, a three-generational mother-to-daughter family portrait that almost loses itself in a vortex of introspection. Although now in her 50s, with a husband, successful teaching job, and daughter of her own, Barbara has never been able to confront or forgive her mother, June Pupnick, for her affair with the “Shabbos goy” in their Orthodox Jewish community in Milwaukee. “My mother torched my home, my shul,” Barbara mourns, full of emotional discomfort, guilt for keeping her mother’s secrets, and skepticism that she can be a good-enough parent to her own daughter, Lili. Brafman’s sober, earnest novel mines this sensitive territory obsessively, focusing on Barbara’s yearnings and undigested feelings to the exclusion of almost everything else. Crosscutting between the 1970s and 2009, the narrative juxtaposes the crises of the past—June's transgressions, a child care episode in California that ended badly, a breakdown—with the problems of today, which mainly involve Lili. Barbara’s coping mechanisms start to fail in the face of the reappearances of the compassionate rebbetzin (rabbi’s wife) of her childhood and also of her mother, newly restored to town by Barbara’s brother after her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. And there’s more, with Brafman ratcheting up the pressure until a very late shift in perspective that, enhanced by an intervention from Lili, allows ill feelings to be swept away in a tide of comprehension and compassion.

Sincere but long-winded, Brafman’s story cycles through a limited range of emotional chords, to numbing effect.

Pub Date: April 14, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-938849-51-0

Page Count: 280

Publisher: Prospect Park Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942

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These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942

ISBN: 0060652934

Page Count: 53

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL MY ROAD BEFORE ME
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
PRESENT CONCERNS
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
BOXEN
by C.S. Lewis

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THE CHOSEN

by Chaim Potok ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1967

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This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.