Goyhood - Reuven Fenton - ★★.¾

AUTHOR: Reuven Fenton

GENRE: Jewish Contemporary Fiction.

PUBLICATION DATE: May 28, 2024

RATING: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary coming-of-age novel, though the main characters are middle-aged. A good debut work, but somewhat uneven in execution. This book didn’t gel with me for various reasons, but it does have its merits and ought to work better for the right reader, preferably a Jewish one.

Plot Preview:

Twins David and Marty were pretty close in childhood, but have been estranged since many years. They live almost contrasting lives. Marty, who now goes by Mayer, is a Talmud scholar married into a rich rabbinic family from Brooklyn. David lives a hedonistic life, focussed more on material enhancement than on spiritual development.

When their mother dies and the brothers come together to plan a funeral, they are totally unprepared for the shell-shocking revelation in her final missive: she was not Jewish. And as per Jewish law, if your mother isn’t Jewish, neither are you. This obviously impacts Mayer much more than David. Mayer’s only solution is to convert to Judaism before his wife finds out, and hopefully convince her to marry him again as their marriage is no longer valid. With the earliest date he can get for the conversion being a week away, David suggests a road trip n the interim, with their mom’s ashes in tow.

The story comes to us in the limited third person perspective of the twins.

When I read the blurb of this book, I was quite intrigued by the concept of a faith crisis. Who are we after we are stripped of the religious identity given to us in childhood? Food for introspection! But somehow, the execution of the plot and the character development didn’t click well for me. I have read a few Jewish fiction books, and enjoyed them all. This one is going to be the first exception, to my utter regret.

Bookish Yays:

😍 The initial chapters, until just before the road trip begins – quite interesting.

😍 Plenty of pop culture references appropriate to the era.

😍 The writing flow and grasp of the language – quite strong for a debut novelist, and not surprising, considering the author’s background as a journalist.

😍 The exploration of the connection of faith and identity – so thought-provoking! Also loved how some of the characters explained why God works the way he does. Very interesting!

😍 Popeye the one-eyed dog. Need I explain why!

Bookish Mixed Bags:

😐 The contrary personalities of the siblings – one cool, one geeky – makes for an intriguing experience. The bond between the brothers also comes out well. However, I find it tough to connect with characters who are written as cool through their materialistic tendencies.

😐 The road trip was great and gives ample opportunity to get to know the twins. However, the writing makes the trip appear episodic, with disconnected jumps across events through the journey.

😐 The book has plenty of humour, some sardonic and situational, which works for me and some crass and/or somewhat sexist, which is never to my taste.

😐 While the characters – both lead and supporting – are atypical to a great extent, I couldn’t really get a hang of many of their personalities. I could see what they do, but couldn’t figure out the whys. They all seemed to be ‘in the moment’ decision-makers, which made them appear rather capricious. I especially wish that Mayer’s wife had been better fleshed out. Her character had so much potential, but we barely got to understand her.

😐 The story focusses much on Orthodox Jewish beliefs. This was a learning experience, as well as a befuddling one. Some part went above my head. For instance, I did not know that “goy” meant “non-Jew”. After I Googled this, the title makes sense. There are many such instances in the book where I felt like I missed out on the essence of something because I didn’t get the exact nuance of the word used, though there is some contextual elaboration in many cases. I didn’t want to keep on searching online because there were too many such words and looking them up was breaking my reading flow. I’d have appreciated a glossary at the start of the book for all non-English words.

😐 The pace is fairly steady, but the middle section drags a bit.

Bookish Nays:

☹️ Somehow, the book feels more slapstick than realistic, even though the story has serious moments. There are many exaggerations of ordinary situations. These might lead to a great movie adaptation, but as a reader, this type of OTT content doesn’t work for me.

☹️ For some reason, I couldn’t connect with the character of Charlayne, the Black influencer. She was too perfect to feel authentic, so she felt like an anomaly in this book. (This could also be chalked down to my bias against influencers.) Those long conversations with her spouting the truths of life didn’t work for me.

☹️ The ending was quite disappointing to me. Without going into spoilers, all I can say is that it came out of nowhere and didn’t fit the original character trajectory.

All in all, many of my issues stem from the lack of connect with the Jewish terms and the character choices. At the same time, I feel like this will work better for the right reader. Mine is an outlier review, so feel free to take the above with a pinch of salt.

Such books make me feel like there should be a genre called “Men’s Fiction”. It is unfair that there is Women’s Fiction and not Men’s Fiction, right? And this book would be perfect for such a label: male characters, male sentiments, coming of age even when you are middle-aged,… almost every bit of this novel is geared towards the male reader. That doesn’t mean women won’t enjoy it. But I think men will be able to connect better with it.

Recommended to those readers who are more familiar than I am with Jewish terms, and enjoy male-centric road trip books.

2.75 stars. (3 stars means “I liked it”. So this rating means that I came close to liking it.)

My thanks to the author, Central Avenue Publishing, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Goyhood”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.