By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
The 1950s
Imagine you discover that members of your family are involved in something shady and illegal. You also realize that your father, who is a police officer, is working to protect the criminal element in your community. In fact, the mob is his first allegiance. That’s the dilemma facing Jay deVenezia in “Crossing the Bronx” by David Hirshberg (Fig Tree Books): how can he prevent members of the mob from destroying a neighborhood in the Bronx in order to enrich themselves? Jay must not only decide if he is willing to risk actions that might harm his father Ike and his brother Eric, but whether it’s justified to use illegal means for a good cause.
That Jay believes the end justifies the means is clear from the beginning of the novel: after being released from jail for his actions, Jay must visit a parole officer and a therapist, Dr. Leah Silverman. During his visits to Dr. Silverman, he not only reviews his troubled relationship with his bully brother Eric and his parents’ unhappy marriage, but his own actions and how they may have negatively affected them. Before his prison term, Jay had been working at Spins, a record store, which is where he learned the mob was using the store to pass messages to Eric and his friends without the police knowing. Jay also meets his girlfriend Francesca at the store and, with her help, they uncover a plot to move the planned Cross Bronx Expressway so the mob can use the insider information to increase its income at the expense of store owners. Jay must not only find a way to inform on the mob, but to stay alive once his role is revealed.
Jay’s relationship to Judaism is also explored. Of the two brothers, he is the only one who enjoyed Hebrew school and feels a connection to their rabbi. He notes that his father Ike “was a dago-Jew, more Italian than Heeb, deVenezia, from the original ghetto. Orphaned, which may explain his lust for acceptance by those in power and his rage when he beat the… out of me… He was the only Jew in the orphanage with a hundred Catholic kids, and it was his good fortune that he had the physical characteristics to stand up for himself.” Jay’s mother’s family is from Azerbaijan, “one of the so-called Mountain Jews of whom it is said they stopped at the base of the mountain, gazed up, and prayed to God that they wouldn’t have to climb it. Instead, they got on a tramp steamer that eventually took them to the Promised Land: The Bronx, New York.”
“Crossing the Bronx” has a solid, interesting plot and includes a few well done twists. Some readers might prefer more of a discussion of the ethical dilemmas Jay faced; however, they still can admire him for admitting the wrongs he did and his willingness to face the consequences of his actions. Readers may also debate how much Jay owed his family, even with their wrongdoings, versus what he owed the greater community.
The 1990s and 2001
“Mankind [is] like a group of porcupines in the winter. They felt the cold, so they all huddled together for warmth. Then they felt the prickle of one another’s needles and sprang apart. Together, apart, together, apart – and so on into infinity. This is mankind’s lot.” While not everyone would agree with that as a description of humankind, it definitely defines Sonia, a Hungarian immigrant, who is the main character in Fran Fabriczki’s “Porcupines” (Summit Books). While she is close to her daughter, Mila, Sonia refuses to discuss her past, leaving the 6-year-old Mila wondering whom her father is. It doesn’t help that Sonia refuses to become close to any of the mothers at Mila’s school or take part in any school activities. In fact, she actively avoids conversations with the other parents or staff members. This is partly because Sonia is hiding details about her life, details that readers will slowly discover as the novel continues.
Since the novel rotates between different time periods, readers do learn more about Sonia, including a little about her life in Hungary with her parents and her trip in 1996 to the U.S. to visit her now Orthodox practicing sister. What happened between 1996 and 2011 is only addressed later in the novel. However, Sonia so keeps her distance from people in the 2001 chapters that she refuses to ask questions even when she has no idea what the person is talking about. This leads to some amusing confusion as she tries to trick the person into giving her more information. For example, when a fellow parent talks to her about an upcoming school trip, Sonia has no idea what the woman is talking about and only later learns Mila has signed her up to be a chaperone for the trip. The reason Mila faked her signature on the form? She’s arranged for them to meet the person she thinks is her father during the trip, although she keeps that a secret from her mother.
Sonia is Jewish, although not actively practicing. In fact, the biggest surprise when she arrived in the U.S. in 1996 was just how serious her sister was about religion: she sees Rina and her husband as “the kind of [Jews] who celebrated holidays she’s never heard of and feared censure from a God if [they] didn’t observe those holidays the way God prescribed.” Their life revolved around their home and the synagogue. Although they try to get her involved in their religious community, Sonia is resistant because this is so distant from the Judaism her parents practiced, or, to be more accurate, didn’t practice. In fact, her father saw all religion as a cult, something to be avoided.
“Porcupines” proved to a surprisingly satisfying novel. The surprise came because, while readers may not warm to Sonia, her life is intriguing and interesting, especially when the author slowly reveals answers to the questions that will arise in readers’ minds. Many of Sonia’s life choices are not necessarily ones to be admired, but, in the end, those very choices made this an absorbing, well-plotted work.
The year 2020
Incompatible personalities: that’s the way I felt about 37-year-old Layla Moody, the main character in “What You Should Worry About” by Meryl Branch-McTiernan (Akashic Books). Yes, we agreed about politics, but her reactions to the COVID pandemic differed greatly from mine, as did some of her ideas about forming relationships. However, it is understandable that Layla is feeling isolated after moving back to New York City just before the pandemic began. It doesn’t help that the pandemic put a damper on her career: she was supposed to start writing episodes for a TV series that would be filmed in New York. Unfortunately, all production has been put on hold due to the pandemic. While she has friends in the city, most of them are being extra careful because of COVID, meaning they refuse to meet with her in person. Plus, she’s alone in her parent’s apartment in Queens: her father passed away not long before and her mother is currently in Florida.
Layla is so desperate to be with people that she decides to go to Fire Island for the summer, moving into a house with other boarders who all have agreed to practice some level of self-distancing. She also wants to spread her father’s ashes, feeling that the water at Fire Island is the perfect place. Plus, since she is unhappily single, she wants to find a life partner. However, it came as a surprise that she expects a connection to occur when she goes home with someone whom she just met in a bar. That they wouldn’t ask for her phone number was not a surprise to me. Her mood is not helped by the fact that she can’t seem to let go of her ex-boyfriend, following him and his current girlfriend online, rather than discovering a way to move on.
However, as much as I don’t think Layla and I could ever be friends, her adventures were fun to read about. Readers will give her credit for being spunky and for refusing to let COVID stop her from working to create an in-person social life for herself. Layla is half Jewish: at one point, she mentions that her father was Irish and her mother a “hymie,” leading the person she is speaking with to note that “from the Irish you get your power to drink, and from the Jews your power to overthink.” That seems a very accurate description of Layla. “What You Should Worry About” is not a rom-com, but rather a look at someone who finds it extremely difficult to be alone, not a wonderful personality trait to have when a pandemic leads to isolation.