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The third of six children in a family that harks back to a gloried Hassidic dynasty, Judy Brown grew up with the legacy of centuries of religious teaching, and the faith and lore that sustained her people for generations. But her carefully constructed world begins to crumble when her "crazy" brother Nachum returns home after a year in Israel living with relatives. Though supposedly "cured," he is still prone to retreating into his own mind or erupting in wordless rages.
The adults' inability to make him better — or even to give his affliction a name — forces Judy to ask larger questions: If God could perform miracles for her sainted ancestors, why can't He cure Nachum? And what of the other stories her family treasured? Judy starts to negotiate with God, swinging from holy tenets to absurdly hilarious conclusions faster than a Talmudic scholar: she goes on a fast to nab coveted earrings; she fights with her siblings at the dinner table for the ultimate badge of honor ("Who will survive the next Holocaust?"); and she adamantly defends her family's reputation when, scandalously, her parents are accused of having fallen in love — -which is absolutely not what pious people do.
For all its brutal honesty about this insular community, This Is Not a Love Story is ultimately a story of a family like so many others, whose fierce love for each other and devotion to their faith pulled them through the darkest time in their lives.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 28, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781478952459
- File size: 225359 KB
- Duration: 07:49:29
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 1, 2015
A child's perspective on a family's ordeal. In her revealing nonfiction debut, Brown, who published a young adult novel, Hush (2010), under the pseudonym Eishes Chayil, recounts growing up Hassidic in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1980s and '90s. Vividly capturing the voice of her younger self, she portrays an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community marked by piety, prejudice, and superstition and her loving family roiled by the mystifying, often terrifying, affliction of her younger brother, Nachum. "When I tried to share with him, he blinked, flailed his hands, and sometimes gave a piercing shriek," Brown recalls, "and I didn't want to play with him anymore." The author wasn't satisfied when adults told her that everything-including Nachum's madness-was part of "God's Grand Master Plan"; or that Nachum was crazy because her mother didn't nurse him; or he must have been dropped on his head. Talmudic lore held that an angel, after imbuing an unborn child's soul with holy knowledge, strikes him on the upper lip to erase that memory. "But sometimes," Brown was told, "the angel strikes the upper lip too hard," making it impossible for the child to remember anything, "even how to speak, how to say simple words. Such a child is born mad, like my brother." The author felt cursed by her brother's existence-not only the havoc he wreaked in the family, but because she believed that having a defective brother lessened a matchmaker's chances of finding her a husband. Only her mother was convinced that Nachum could be helped. She took him to Israel, going from doctor to doctor in search of a diagnosis. The results were no more satisfying than the story of the angel: ADHD, psychosis, and chemical imbalance. Finally, one doctor diagnosed autism. Nachum improved dramatically after a few years in a special school, becoming, at last, the brother whom Brown could love. A tender story gently told.
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