J. Dylan Yates, The Belief in Angels, She Writes Press, ISBN 9781938314643, 314 pages, $16.95.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—This is a book bound to prompt mixed feelings among Jewish readers. It’s well written, engrossing, and offers some important insights into how horror, shame and tragedy can be transmitted and mutated through the generations.
At the same time, deep down in your kishkes, you wish that one of the main characters, Wendy, was anything but Jewish—she is such an awful, destructive mother, who rationalizes her darn-near criminal neglect of her children by contrasting her approach to parenting with the hovering, over-protective, manner in which she was raised. There’s not much comfort to be taken in the fact that her husband, a non-Jew, is an even nastier example of misbegotten humanity.
Yates, a San Diegan making her debut as a novelist, tells the story through the eyes of Wendy’s daughter, Jules, whom we first meet as a pre-teen and follow through her survival as a teenager in a dysfunctional family, in which you just know tragedy is waiting to happen.
The gripping family tale is also told through the eyes of Wendy’s uncle, Samuel, a Holocaust survivor who has seen and experienced such unspeakable cruelty, that it would have been understandable if he had gone stark, raving mad. He instead became a fierce protector of his family, who nearly suffocated them in the process. He was determined not to let the harm that befell his siblings during World War II affect his niece Wendy, who came into his life suddenly. So overly protective was Samuel, he never told Wendy the harsh circumstances of her birth.
So we have a stifling, though well-meaning, grandfather, whose daughter became a libertine, rebellious, drug-using, exhibitionist hedonist. Great-niece Jules raises herself, and make some bad choices, and a reader can’t help but wonder how she and her two brothers, one younger, and one older, will respond to their upbringing when and if they have their turn to become parents.
Are there angels watching over people against whom the odds seem terribly stacked? If so, do they come in the form of other human beings who treat other people’s victims with genuine kindness?
This book will make you wince, perhaps even cry, but it’s guaranteed to make you think about how children are being raised and what damage could be wreaked upon them.
One message gleaned from this novel: hug your children tight when they need it, and release them, when they don’t.
*
Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World, which seeks sponsorships to be placed, as this notice is, just below articles that appear on our site. This is an ideal opportunity for your corporate message or to personally remember a loved one’s contributions to our community. To inquire, call editor Donald H. Harrison at (619) 265-0808 or contact him via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com