Books: The joy of friendship, bad bosses and truly mad parents

Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein (Granta) Allegory on antisemitism

In Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling novel, Study for Obedience, we are presented with an unnamed narrator who has moved to an unnamed northern country to take care of her older brother whose wife has left him. This role of carer is not unusual for our narrator who, even as the youngest child, took care of her needy siblings.

But almost as soon as she arrives at her brother’s baronial home, in this country where they are both strangers, a series of unfortunate events occur to the local animals for which the townspeople hold her responsible: a herd of cows has gone mad and must be put down; a depressive sow crushes her piglets to death, a ewe dies while giving birth.

The community spurns her, believing “whatever contagion they associated with me would attach itself to them.” Her attempts to ingratiate herself, by being modest, pliable and inoffensive, have the opposite effect of “inflaming their superstitions (and) bringing out their fears”. 

Bernstein’s novel is not just about the exclusion of the “other”, the stranger, “to enable the cohesion of the whole”, it is very specifically an allegory of antisemitism, though the word Jewish is never used. Instead, scattered throughout, there are small references to such things as chopped herring, gefilte fish, and the Sabbath table.

And there are less benign references: “One always seemed to fall into the hands of a judge who was also one’s enemy. No plunder too low, no picking too slim. One’s very ashes would be sifted for the gold tooth, the wedding ring.” 

This book was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2023 and Bernstein has been named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Born in Montreal she now lives in Scotland where she teaches literature and creative writing.  

The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief - Steven Mayoff (Radiant Press) Comic Jewish-themed satire 

The central character of this novel, Canadian artist Samson Grief, has been trying to assimilate into his new home in Prince Edward Island (PEI) by creating works blending Jewish stories with Island settings. Think Joseph wearing his rain slicker of many colours and a sculpture of Noah’s Ark made entirely of lobster traps. 

Concerned that his work is being misrepresented as mere kitsch, and after the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers, Grief decides a bold change of direction is required and he paints Anne of Bergen-Belsen, a reference to the famous classic novel, Anne of Green Gables. The artwork grabs national attention and also heralds the arrival of three strange red-haired men into Grief’s life - Judas, Shylock and Fagin - figments of his imagination and each a prime example of antisemitic sentiment.

Fast forward 13 years and the “figs”, as Grief calls them, are back. This time their appearance coincides with a work in progress of Moses leading his people across the Gulf of St Lawrence where a starfish has inexplicably grown another arm to become a six-pointed Star of David.

It turns out that the figs have a message from the “Supreme One” who has decided that PEI is the New Promised Land and tasks Grief with building the first synagogue - on a rubbish dump. All this is revealed in the first few pages of the book.

As Grief reluctantly accepts his mission, we are drawn into a madcap adventure involving a string of colourful characters including the Latke Lady, dodgy property developer Reuben Arsenault, and a video podcasting dominatrix called Anne Surly (another invocation of Green Gables’ Anne Shirley). As they say: You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the ride . . . but it helps.  

Working for the Brand - Josh Bornstein (Scribe) Non-fiction critique on free speech in the digital age

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s first few weeks in power, it comes as no surprise to hear Josh Bornstein’s assertion that the greatest threat to democracy comes from the out-of-control corporation. But Bornstein’s book, subtitled “how corporations are destroying free speech”, was published before the recent US election and takes aim at not just the businesses fronted by the president’s billionaire buddies: He targets the whole range of corporate enterprise from sporting bodies to universities, media outlets to airline companies - and everything between.

Bornstein argues that a worker’s responsibility to the company now extends well beyond their performance in the job. They are unable to express their views privately on matters unrelated to their employment if it damages the company brand. That could be making a joke on Instagram or showing their political support on a bumper sticker, and they won’t know they’ve ‘transgressed’ until they're sacked. 

Corporations are sensitive to any “bad press” which might affect their profitability, and social media has now supercharged the ability of groups keen to cancel opposing ideas. The pile-on of righteous indignation, aimed at the offender’s employer, has seen too many organisations try to salvage their own image by placating the mob and severing ties with the target of their rage. 

Bornstein draws on his practice as an industrial relations lawyer representing employees who have lost their jobs - not because they failed to do them well but because they were inadvertently damaging the brand. Unsurprisingly, he claims that the continued undermining of the union movement has made it easier for corporations to prosecute these dismissals.   

This well-researched book is thought-provoking and shocking. You’ll want to share the insights with everyone you know.  

The Joy of Connections - Dr Ruth K Westheimer (Scribe) Self-help tips to combat loneliness

Before she was appointed New York’s Loneliness Ambassador in 2023 - the first such position in the US - Dr Ruth Westheimer was known to a generation of Americans as simply Dr Ruth, sex therapist, author and talk show host.  It’s therefore amusing that her final book, published after her death last year at the age of 96, and which promises “100 ways to beat loneliness”, should be titled The Joy of Connections in what must surely be a nod to the 70s best-selling sex manual, The Joy of Sex.

And Dr Ruth knows a thing or two about being lonely from personal experience. At the age of 10 she was sent from her home in Germany to Switzerland to escape the Nazis. She never saw her parents or grandparents again. All perished in the Holocaust. She made her way to Palestine as an orphan and refugee, later moved to France and finally settled in the US.

As well as making constant reference to her own life to illustrate her points, Dr Ruth provides a practical action list of things to do. Her style is chatty and encouraging. “If you’re lonely, you may have to force yourself to be more friendly - to be more social. Nobody will come to your door on a white horse and whisk you away . . .  The going is up to you.”

At the end, the book includes an interview with the US Surgeon General, who proclaimed loneliness an epidemic in the US causing serious health issues. “Being socially disconnected increases our risk of depression and anxiety as well as heart disease, dementia, and premature death . . . (it) is associated with an increase in mortality that is comparable to smoking daily and even greater than that which we see with obesity.”  

The Safekeep - Yael Van Der Wouden (Penguin) Literary love story with a secret

During WWII, Isabel’s uncle obtains a house in rural Holland so that her mother and two brothers, Louis and Hendrik, can decamp to relative safety from their home in Amsterdam. Now, 15 years after the end of the war, their mother has died, the brothers have moved out into their own lives, and Isabel remains alone in the house, immersed in the steady rhythm of her daily routine.

But the house does not belong to Isabel. She knows that on the death of her uncle it will go to Louis, and that might happen at any time, leaving her with nothing. Louis is an inveterate romantic, and his most recent infatuation is with Eva, a woman to whom Isabel takes an instant dislike.

Unfortunately for Isabel, Louis installs Eva in the house while he is travelling abroad for work. “Eva took up space with a loud restlessness, a bee stuck in a room with all the windows shut. . . Her perfume bullied itself around the house.”

At first, Isabel is imperious and rude to her unwanted visitor, determined to freeze her out. But Eva remains resolutely cheerful and kind in the face of this hostility. There is something compelling about Eva, the intruder who seems to have no past and whose family is “nowhere”. As the dynamic between the two women changes, Eva comes to obsess her host, and we are left to wonder who is the real interloper?

This debut novel by Yael Van Der Wouden has been described as “thrilling”, “electric” and “deeply sexy”. The author, a lecturer in creative writing, came to international attention with her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, On (Not) Reading Anne Frank.  She will be appearing at both of this year’s Sydney and Melbourne Writers festivals. 

Enjoyed The Safekeep? Join Editor-in-Chief Deborah Stone to unravel Yael van der Wouden's enigmatic novel from a Jewish perspective in TJI's Interactive Online Book Club on Monday 28 April 2025. More information here.

My Family: the memoir - David Baddiel (4th Estate) Comedic memoir  

“I do think the way my family was, the only possible route forward for me was comedy”, writes author and comedian, David Baddiel, in this touching and honest account of his family, in particular, his parents, Sarah and Colin.

Sarah, who had a passionate and decades long extra-marital affair with a golfer, became obsessed with the sport in which she had previously shown no interest. She fills up the family home with golfing tchotchkes and runs a business called golfiana selling memorabilia. She is also keen to let everyone, including her children, know about her torrid love life, styling herself as “north London’s erotic golf empress”.    

As a young man, Colin, a PhD in biochemistry, made LSD in his lab and tried it at four times the normal dose, which Baddiel suggests may have accounted for his later life dementia. “It appears at the time he was a British-Jewish prototype of Walter White - Breaking Baddiel”.  

Australian readers might remember Baddiel from his visit in 2023 when he presented his documentary, Jews Don’t Count, a prescient statement in light of the international response to October 7. It was a message Baddiel learnt from a young age. As he recounts in this book, at the age of 11 on his last day of primary school, his teacher told the students, “wherever we went in the world, there would always be someone who didn’t like Jews.”

Much of the material in this book is taken from Baddiel’s live show, My Family: Not the Sitcom, which may explain why it reads like a script from a stand-up gig transferred to the page, along with lots of photos and press clippings: a sort of very funny rambling scrapbook. “Laughter is the only thing that truly separates us from the animals. As an atheist, I recognise it as God’s greatest gift to humanity,” Baddiel says.