Fiction Pick of the Week: The Believers

The Believers by Zoe Heller

The Believers is a dark and funny farce of politics and family life by Zoe Heller. Her last novel, Notes on a Scandal, was Booker-shortlisted, translated into 29 languages and adapted into an Oscar nominated film.
This new novel is fascinating and astonishingly well written. It is an unsentimental look at the beliefs we hold true about ourselves. Heller, herself an avowed atheist has written a novel about the challenge to the beliefs of a family of atheist, political activitists. The negative, sharp tongued utterances of Audrey, the matriarch, are so vitriolic and devilishly hilarious that she spares nobody who is within her range including her children. However, her belief system is shattered when the scandalous truth concerning her idolized husband of 40 years is revealed as he lies helplessly in a coma after succumbing to a stroke. The marriage was based on false beliefs .The helpless husband lying inert in the hospital bed exerts life-altering changes on the family. Rosa, the adult daughter, reared as an atheist activist flirts with Orthodox Judaism . Karla, the subject of years of maternal mean-spirited comments, turns her belief of herself as worthless into a belief in her own happiness. Lenny, the drug addicted wastrel, has his own crisis of faith as he attempts to turn his life around.
This is an engaging novel of ideas by a very assured and talented author.