The Believers: A Novel

by: Zoe Heller

Published by: HarperCollins

Reviewed by Cindy Loven

While touted to be an outstanding book about a family coming to terms with who they are, unfortunately I found this book to be disappointing on several levels. The Believers was a book about a family who was dysfunctional in every sense of the word, and it was the theme of the story line of this book.

A blended family by adoption, the Litvinoff family has been handed a shock when Joel, the head of the family, has a massive stroke. Each family member struggles through their own issues, dashed dreams and addictive habits. Throw in a story line of an adulterous affair, several actually, involving an illegitimate son and you have the story. However there was the excessive use of adult language, that added nothing to the story, and casual sex, again adding nothing to the story, that changed what could have been a wonderful book into a mediocre story.

This was a family committed to fighting social injustices, but did not see the hurts and shortcomings in their own lives, nor the hurts in each other’s lives. This was a family in need of a cause, and they searched continually for that cause. Exploring all sorts of religious, political and social views, this book was all over the map biographically and emotionally.

In this book, you will find members of the Litvinoff family who have problems with drugs, with weight issues, with moral issues, with fidelity issues, and with a hunger to know more about their roots, religion and God. The searching of each family member created within me an ache for their pain they were going through.

Author Zoe Heller did a nice job addressing these issues and kept the story line interesting and believable, however due to the adult nature of this book, and the use of language, I give this book a three-star rating.

Armchair Interviews agrees.