“I Am Forbidden” by Anouk Markovits. (Hogarth, 2013.)
“The Imposter Bride” by Nancy Richler. (St. Martin’s, 2012.)
“Brooklyn Love” by Yael Levy. (Crimson Romance, 2012.)
Recently several novels have been published that examine the nature of Jewish marriage. Each of these novels presents an insight into the lives of Jewish women in the modern world. Each novel has a very different manner of approaching the subject.
“I am Forbidden” by Anouk Markovits takes readers into the rarely examined world of the Satmar Chasidic community. The novel begins in World War II in Romania when two children in different families see their parents murdered. The boy Josef is rescued by the family’s maid who raises him as her son. Later Josef hides the girl Mila as her parents are being killed. Mila makes her way to a Satmar enclave. There, the Rabbi Zalman Stern hears of Josef and removes him from the maid’s care. The novel progresses from Romania to France and finally the United States. The reader sees the marriage of Mila and Josef, the alienation of Rabbi Stern’s intellectual daughter Antara who eventually leaves the Satmar community rather than being forced into an arranged marriage, and finally the fate of Mila and Josef’s granddaughter on the verge of her wedding day. This unblinking depiction of the Satmar community is fascinating, unsettling and knowledgeable. Like Antara, Anouk Markovits was raised in the Satmar community, but rebelled against its strictures.
“The Imposter Bride” by Nancy Richler is set in the Jewish community of Montreal just after World War II. A young woman named Lily arrives from Europe to make an arranged marriage. Her groom-to-be rejects her, but his younger brother steps in, marries her, and falls deeply in love. Nothing, of course, is as it should be. Lily has assumed the name and papers of another woman. She and her husband have a daughter, but she cannot continue to live a lie, and disappears. The bulk of the novel follows Lily’s daughter Ruth who yearns for the mother who could not remain in her strange marriage and eventually uncovers her secrets. This lovely novel examines the repercussions of the Holocaust, the need to escape history as well as the need to recover it. It is also a window on the vibrant Montreal Jewish community.
Finally “Brooklyn Love” by Yael Levy is a flat-out romance novel set in the Orthodox community in Brooklyn. Several marriageable young women are looking for husbands. There are problems, however, because Rachel wants to be an artist, Leah wants to go to medical school and become a doctor, and Hindy, who is not as attractive as her friends, only wants to marry a scholar. As the three of them move from shiddach to shiddach having miserable dates where there is no touching and no spark of attraction, the novel is by turns hilarious, heart-rending and constantly interesting. Levy knows the Brooklyn community. Every girl is hoping to find her beshert Each girl is following the strictures of the community, trying to please her parents, and trying to make a good life for herself. “Brooklyn Love” is a wonderful escape novel. The author is planning to write more romance novels set in the Orthodox community.
Andrea Kempf is a retired librarian who speaks throughout the community on various topics related to books and reading.