Bethanne Patrick interviews Zoe Heller about her book "The Believers" on The Book Studio.

Joel Litvinoff, a famous left-wing New York Jewish lawyer, lies in a coma. This is the story of his highly dysfunctional family, focussing on his ogress wife Audrey and his two daughters bright, rebellious Rosa and dumpy doormat Karla.

The characters are all vivid and generally credible, although it is hard to believe that Audrey has any friends at all - she is just so appallingly rude to everyone, all of the time. Heller works best at the motives people have to change their lives. While Audrey is unable to break out of her image - once feisty, now overbearing, Karla tenatively moves away from the hard left towards orthodox Judaism. Karla, meanwhile, struggles to find a solution to an unhappy marriage.

Most of the decisions we make about the important things in our lives are instinctive. We may weigh up the pros and cons but we go with our guts. Heller is great and dissecting the thought processes of her protaganists as they wrestle with their problems.

There is some lampooning of the left here as well. It's not really as successful, because not very original. Many of the activists are engaged in the kind of holier than thou arguments that charcterise university students. These have been satirised so many times that Heller can't really do anything much new with the material. But this is a minor criticism in a book which has sharp writing and plenty of insights into the human character. ( )

http://notesofanidealist.wordpress.co... ( )

Another read for my book group and a good one. I wasn't keen on reading Notes on a Scandal, but i may now having read this. Strange that although the main characters are not on the surface very likeable, I came to like them a lot. Audrey the mother may be the exception but if you liked all the characters in novels it would start to get pretty dull. I think the skill here is presenting some unlikeable characters that you genuinely care about and care what happens to them even though you may not like what they do-good lessons for us all! I especially liked the children who were flawed and fabulous at the same time.
Some interesting questions arise here about belief, religion and politics-some useful insights about the radicalisation of some beliefs that can start to be as extreme as the religions they may criticize. It made me think about my left leaning views, I dont think it meant to or did change my views but a useful mirror.
Totally agrree about some of the awful covers for this book, way too chick lit and it really isnt. ( )

I enjoyed this a lot more than I'd expected to: despite the shiny gold cover, it's not fluffy "chick lit", but an absorbing and stylish satire. Most of the characters are utterly horrid - particularly Audrey - but they also feel real. I think, though, that there's too much going on for one book, with the result that it comes across as a bit superficial at times: the stories of Karla and Rosa alone would make a novel, and I would have liked to read more about them. ( )