Strange Relations (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Strange Relations Karen Coats Levitin, Sonia Strange Relations. Knopf, 2007299p Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-93751-4$18.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-83751-7$15.99 R Gr. 7-10 It is Marne's idea to spend the summer with Aunt Chaya and her family in Hawaii; after all, her mother will be working hard in Paris, and her parents don't want her to stay home alone when her father pulls night shifts at the hospital. Her mother warns her that Chaya is intense, but it isn't until Marne finds herself in the midst of an observant Chasidic family that she realizes how foreign their lives are from anything she knows. Uncle Yitz, a rabbi, and Aunt Chaya are Lubavitchers committed to bringing Yiddishkeit, but they are strong believers in privacy who work hard not to embarrass or impose their way of life on Marne. Their five kids are not so careful, though, and Marne often feels out of place and defensive as she senses their disapproval for her inadvertent transgression of their many rules. Though religious discourse does become pretty thick as the novel progresses, the portrayal of this observant Jewish family and the community that clusters around them is judiciously handled, warts and all. Levitin takes pains to indicate that Chaya has always been extreme no matter what her passion, making her radical orthodoxy part of her personality type, and Yitz and she even argue about how her intensity trespasses other people's, namely Marne's, rightful boundaries. Marne is portrayed as skeptical and respectful, but she slowly comes to appreciate the rhythms and traditions of their faith as she begins to work through her own unresolved grief over the loss of her little sister five years earlier and the temptations thrown at her by her wild best friend. The house of a rabbi, it turns out, is a good place to ask the big questions, to sort out who you want to be and what you believe. Readers asking their own questions or living in religious families themselves will welcome the balance of perspectives. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois