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SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
“Something Wild”
Hanna Halperin
Viking Books
THERE ARE NO heroes in
Hanna Halperin’s debut novel
“Something Wild.” But through
reading the novel, one under-
stands a little more deeply that
simply moving through life can
be a heroic task.

Published June 29, “Something
Wild” is a portrait of a fractured
family, brought together and
torn apart by the insidiousness of
domestic violence and intergener-
ational trauma.

Tanya Bloom, an assistant
district attorney in Manhattan
married to a Jewish physician,
could not be much more different
than her older sister Nessa, a
receptionist at a psychiatrist’s
office who is kind-of-dating her
boss’s patient.

Despite having grown up
feeling comfortable seeing each
other naked, talking about
boys and braving their parents’
divorce, their relationship as
adults is, at times, tenuous.

However, their connection
with their mother, Lorraine,
though sometimes compli-
cated, is what ties them
together everlastingly.

Their return to Arlington,
Massachusetts, to assist their
mother in moving to New
Hampshire quickly snowballs
into a mission to help her
escape the manipulations of
their abusive stepfather, Jesse.

Tanya and Nessa are faced
with not only confronting
Jesse, but also all that a
return to their hometown
has seemed to stir up: their
parents’ divorce and respec-
tive second marriages; their
encounter with the enigmatic
Dan, whose presence seems to
loom, no matter how long ago
the sisters saw him; and their
own relationship as siblings.

The novel oscillates between
the points of view of the Bloom
sisters and mother, and past
and present mingle between
liberal section breaks within
each short chapter.

It’s easy to identify the
lows in this book, moments of
violence, grief, arguing, child-
hood trauma that have been
repressed and hidden.

Finding the highs in
“Something Wild” proves more
demanding. Can they be found
when Tanya and Nessa make
up after a fight? In times of
laughter used to distract from
the pressure the sisters put on
Lorraine to file a restraining
order against her husband of
10 years?
In fact, the sisters’ victories
take place between the lines of
this story.

As Tanya reckons with her
pregnancy, Nessa with her
stunted career, the true joy of
the characters in this novel
comes from the choices the
sisters don’t make, how they
learn from the mistakes of
their family.

But still, with triumph scarce
and convoluted in “Something
Wild,” it’s easy for one to feel
trapped in witnessing the
Bloom family’s turmoil. Tearing
through the book, page after
page, looking for moments of
relief, which are hard to come
by, the reader becomes sucked
into what it’s like to try to
protect someone from abuse:
frustrating and helpless.

“Something Wild”’s greatest
shortcoming is its heavy-
handed exposition — the
book is a little slow to start.

Only a few dozen pages in, the
reader is not smacked with the
revelation that Lorraine Bloom
is in an abusive relation-
ship; rather, it’s mentioned in
almost the same manner as the
description of Lorraine’s job or
where she lived. The presen-
tation of this information so
early on and without suspense
is disappointing and feels flat.

Yet here, Halperin, who is
Jewish and has worked as a
domestic violence counselor,
shows how adept she is in her
understanding of abuse: so
ubiquitous in today’s society
that, despite how it ravages a
family through generations,
is unsurprising to the charac-
ters, and therefore, presented
calmly to the audience.

In one scene, the Bloom
sisters and their mother sit
around a table at a beer and
burger restaurant, dissenting
about the menu options and
bickering about what to order.

Interspersed with dialogue
about how everything on
the menu is deep-fried, are
arguments about how Lorraine
is going to navigate her court
hearing to finalize a restraining
order and how she will find a
new place to live without Jesse.

The crux of the novel lies
in this one scene: dealing with
Courtesy of Penguin Random House
Books: ‘Something Wild’ Shares Realities of Abuse
trauma, for many women, is
so common — so seemingly
inevitable — that it becomes
almost mundane.

It’s these mundane moments
that are the most jarring to
witness as a reader.

Through unfussy prose,
“Something Wild” brings
depth to a family that could
hardly be considered special or
unique. This could be considered a feat
on its own, but with its delicate
depiction of domestic abuse,
“Something Wild” becomes a
truly harrowing story. l
srogelberg@jewishexponent.com |
215-832-0741 B OOKS
ANDY GOTLIEB | JE MANAGING EDITOR
AS WRITERS OURSELVES
— even if we happen to be
of the “ink-stained wretch”
variety — we’re constantly
reading, whether it’s for the job
or otherwise.

And when we’re ensconced
in otherwise, we read (and not
just Twitter posts, text messages
and anything else that passes
for literary discourse these
days) for the sheer pleasure
of it. But our tastes are quite
different, as you’ll see below,
18 JULY 8, 2021
where we discuss what’s
holding our interest these days.

By the way, staff writer
Sasha Rogelberg gets a pass
here, as their contribution
is a full-blown review of
“Something Wild’ by Hannah
Halperin, which you can find
directly above this article.

Gabe Kahn, editor-in-chief
“The Premonition: A Pandemic
Story,” by Michael Lewis (W.

W. Norton & Co., 2021)
I’ve been hooked on Michael
Lewis ever since 2003 when
I read “Moneyball.” Not only
was he ahead of the curve (or
era, somehow he even made
numbers fun.

This time Lewis set out to
find who was responsible for
the United States’ botched
response to the COVID-19
pandemic, expecting the
breadcrumbs to lead directly
to former President Donald
Trump. But while neither
Trump nor his administration
was blameless — far from it
— in Lewis’ telling, during his
deep dive into the actions that
led to the death of thousands of
Americans, he found a systemic
maybe the slider?) in presaging failure in government that was
baseball’s advanced-statistics years, and administrations, in
JEWISH EXPONENT
the making.

Because of the gradual polit-
icization of health departments,
officials acted as if “First, do no
harm” applied to government
leaders at the top of the food
chain, and determined that the
best way to accomplish that goal
would be to do nothing at all, to
tragic effect. Lewis tells the story
through the eyes of multiple
state and federal officials who
saw it coming and tried to sound
the alarm, which accomplished
little other than derailing their
own promising careers.

Ye s , r e a d i n g “ T h e
Premonition” is a little
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM The Premonition: Wrong Alibi: Courtesy of HGN
Staff Picks: What We’re Reading This Summer



L ifestyle /C ulture
The Wrestler’s Cruel Study: Courtesy of W.W. Norton & Co. • Everybody: Courtesy of W.W. Norton & Co.

like watching a car crash in
slow motion, but as with
“Moneyball,” Lewis manages to
write a page-turner nonetheless.

seems tailor-made for the mass
market — pro wrestler Michael
Marmaduke, aka Marduk the
Magnificent, seeks to find his
abducted fiancée — Dobyns
goes far deeper than just a
Andy Gotlieb, managing
editor conventional story.

“Wrong Alibi,” by Christina
Instead, the author plumbs
Dodd (HQN, 2020)
the depths of society, considers
“The “Wrestler’s Cruel Study,” various philosophies and, for all
by Stephen Dobyns (W.W. Norton
& Co., 1995)
Two rather different books sit
atop the nightstand these days.

“Wrong Alibi” is a conven-
tional bestseller type of thriller,
complete with an interesting
protagonist looking to get
revenge on the man who set
her up for murder, a compel-
ling setting and a couple twists
and turns.

It’s the kind of story that
easily could be adapted for the
big screen.

That said, it’s well-written
and moves briskly along,
making it an ideal beach
read — particularly when it’s
90 degrees in Margate, and
Evie, the main character, is
dealing with subzero Alaskan
temperatures. Then there’s “The Wrestler’s
Cruel Study,” which I saw on
my parents’ bookshelves, sitting
there years after it was a book
club read. Having read a couple
of Stephen Dobyns’ horror-
thriller books years earlier
— and remembering that he
had a knack for turning a pretty
good phrase — I dug in.

But “The Wrestler’s Cruel
Study” is the opposite of a
beach read. While the premise
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM I know, the meaning of life. Not
the typical kind of stuff to read
at 11:30 p.m. before drifting
off to sleep, but thought-pro-
voking nonetheless.

Eleanor Linafelt, staff writer
“Everybody,” by Olivia Laing
(W.W. Norton & Co., 2021)
“Everybody” is “a book
about freedom,” as the subtitle
states, and Olivia Laing tackles
this broad subject with an
equally broad overview of
people and movements who
have resisted various forms
of oppression over the past
century. Each of the eight chapters
focuses on a different threat
to bodily freedom, from
climate change to incar-
ceration to racism. Laing
provides a detailed look into
the lives of figures who have
grappled with restrictions
on their freedom, including
Susan Sontag, Malcolm X
and Magnus Hirschfeld.

“Everybody” is most compel-
ling when Laing’s voice comes
through; her autobiograph-
ical anecdotes and cultural
analyses are refreshing amidst
the sometimes tedious histor-
ical information.

The consistent thread
throughout the book is
Wilhelm Reich, a German
psychoanalyst and protégé of
Sigmund Freud who was forced
to flee Berlin after the Nazis
came to power. Laing weaves
details of his fascinating
and unusual life through
each chapter, tying together
complex struggles for freedom
across countries and decades.

Jarrad Saffren, staff writer
Microfiction by the very online
writer Default Friend (default-
friend.substack.com) I had never read short
fiction before, as I grew up
in an era (the 2000s) when it
had long since fallen out of
the mainstream. But in this
smartphone/social media
age, everything is niche now,
so short fiction can have its
place again. My own digital
See Read, Page 20
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JULY 8, 2021
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