Reuven Fenton graduated from the School of Journalism at Columbia University. He has been “covering murder and scandal for the New York Post” since 2007 and is the author of Stolen Years: Stories of the Wrongfully Imprisoned (2015).
This is his debut novel.
Fenton has a playful knack with descriptions – They heard the potato potato potato of a motor … – and original similes – the mouthpiece smelt like apricots decomposing in the sun … … his thoughts scattered like feathers in a chicken coop … she hugged like a bear and kissed like a lamprey.
It proves to me that this writer is a real writer in the same way that a miraculous French onion soup is proof it’s made by a real chef.
So, to the book. Meyer, Marty, Belkin doesn’t know how to book a plane ticket, pack a suitcase, the name of any popular tv shows – nor the name of that yellow faced cartoon family who’s mom has a blue beehive as tall as she is – or who his insurance agent is. All he knows is the minutiae of Jewish law and where to read it.
His father-in-law insisted he do nothing but marry his daughter, Sarah, study the Talmud – the central text of Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law – be supported by him, and, oh, and her Dad threw in a house for good measure.
If you can think of the most disparate person to a dough-faced single minded Talmudist who buys new clothes that match the ones he came in with you’ve got his twin brother – although younger by 43 seconds – David, who is now a millionaire-ette thanks to the e-cigarette; this latest get-rich-quick scheme worked; many before didn’t and like all get-rich-quickers he tries anything and buys everything.
Goyhood is a road trip back to New York after finding out, at their mother’s funeral in Moab, Utah and via her suicide note, that she wasn’t Jewish after all. (This isn’t a spoiler; it’s all over the publicity – it’s the set-up) As you can imagine this is an existential crisis for Meyer – Sarah may not remarry him! – not so for David: it’s liberation, exemplified by hiring “the most powerful Charger on the market” calling it Daisy and taking to the road, and dragging his brother along.
Goyhood…having already picked up a stray dog, Popeye, in New Orleans, David reunites with a female acquaintance, Charlayne, which he rather unbelievably invites to share his cheap hotel bed when he’s already sharing it with Meyer. I worried here that Fenton had lost control of the road-trip narrative with an episode that appeared rudderless, novelistically speaking. However, he regains it again when Sarah, Meyer’s wife, rejoins the story, not in person but via a phone call. She is an interesting character and not only her husband’s Judaic anchor but she’s also set up to be the novel’s major plot hurdle. By that I mean, if Meyer can win her back, after divulging the truth of his non-Jewish ancestry – his goyhood – the novel must surely end. Does it? I’m not saying – no spoilers here.
Yes, it’s a road-trip narrative but it didn’t pan out as I expected: Fenton is more interested in how this brief exposure to the real world effects his religious commitment and there’s a few fascinating U-Oh! moments concerning Sarah! Now, that’s interesting.
I’m not religious although raised so but 1960s Australian wheat-farm Lutheranism is a far cry from present day scholastic New York Jewishness. I loved the humour in this book – that dry as oats deadpan kind that comes at things from around a corner – but readers with a Jewish string or two to their life will get far more out of it, I’m sure. The outcome is certainly not predictable as is Meyer’s fate and it’s very satisfying.
Goyhood is being released on May 28th 2024. You can pre-order the hardcover or Kindle editions here.
Michael K Freundt 