The Believers
By Zoe Heller


Due to a nasty flu (which I still suspect to be Swine in nature, but have no proof) I was able to read this book in a very short period of time. I mention this only because I think the sort of largely uninterrupted reading session helped me truly appreciate this book. At a lazier, more spread-out reading, I could see myself having missed some of the brilliance of this simple story.

What I loved so much about this book is that while the characters are expertly defined, sympathetic, enraging and lovable at the same time, the pace and events of the book struck me as remarkably subtle. With a couple of notable exceptions, Heller uses the almost Shakespearean model of major events happening off-stage, and using her time on the page to recount and reflect. With shifting and varied perspectives she writes from different character points of view, sometimes within the same paragraph. At times the language of the book is almost daunting, (I am slightly ashamed to admit) but nothing insurmountable.

The Believers reminded me alot of The Corrections in its unflinching approach to the lies we tell each other and ourselves. It's an amazing study of family dynamics, really wince-able and tragic at times, but real and lovingly told. And it is a tale about believers to be sure, but the kind of believers rarely credited with belief (or as the Litvinoff's might say, denigrated with the word 'belief'); that is the believers of the left. The socialist, atheist believers just as caught up in the dogma of their own rules as any orthodox religion. And, as we see in the book just as indignant and unaccepting of others beliefs a lot of the time. As Heller beautifully illustrates int the book, more so than believing something different, it is the shifting, evolution of what one believes that can be really scary, and of course what is most important.

UP NEXT: The Women By T.C. Boyle