JUNE 2012 - AudioFile
Questions of faith, morality, and tradition are at the center of Markovits’s novel of a Satmar Hasidic family. Rosalyn Landor recounts the lives of four generations of the Stern family as they escape, first, Transylvania and, then, Paris ahead of the Nazis, eventually settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The heart of the story is the relationship between Atara Stern and Mila, the girl raised as her sister, and the way their diverging experiences of faith shape and separate them. Landor brings a quiet reverence to the novel, helping the listener understand the beliefs and emotions of the conventional family members and of those who find themselves outside the bounds of tradition. J.L.K. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
In this English-language debut, set around WWII, Markovits tells a story of miraculous happenings. A Hasidic boy, saved when his family is killed, in turn saves a girl whose family has tried to flee with their beloved rabbi. Returned to the remnants of the community, then separated, they reunite in Brooklyn, where the rabbi is rebuilding the Satmar community, replicating every tradition, ritual, and law of the old world. But miracles and rituals and laws—even when designed to bring followers closer to God—come at a price, and Markovits pays scrupulous attention to those as well. Tracing the Stern family from Transylvania to Paris and Brooklyn, she focuses on daughter Atara and adopted daughter Mila, closer than close, until Atara wants more than the Satmar world can offer. Atara leaves; Mila stays, desperately trying to accommodate belief and desire. When she comes up with a theological work-around, we not only sympathize but understand; it is, after all, no more tangled and self-serving than the explanation of how the rabbi made it out of Europe. Raised in a Satmar home, Markovits plays fair: the believers are not stupid; their harsh world has beauty. We dwellers in the modern world know what “should” happen, but Markovits shows why, for those in the other world, it’s not that simple. (May)
From the Publisher
The wonder of this elegant, enthralling novel is the beauty Ms. Markovits unearths in the Hasidic community she takes us into. Ms. Markovits, big-hearted and surprising, tenderly captures the complexities of adulthood for the one who stayed.... I Am Forbidden whips by, its extravagant narrative steadily cast with complicated, thoughtful characters.”
—Susannah Meadows, The New York Times
"Anouk Markovits's portrayal of the contradictions and compromises of Hasidic faith is fascinating."
—Times Literary Supplement
“Markovits makes her stamp on the literary world with an ambitious, religiously-centered debut. [T]his ambitious, revelatory novel richly rewards your efforts and heralds a promising new writer.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A captivating tale.”
—People
“Markovits’s heroines are disenfranchised but resourceful, possessing an innate spirituality, despite, or perhaps because of, the freedom denied them.”
—New Yorker
“A lyrical novel about obedience, rebellion and tragedy by an author who grew up in the Hasidic community she writes about. With poetic grace, she succeeds at depicting the culture from the inside out, conveying the way in which a life of limitation and law can provide a bulwark of meaning.”
—Ilana Teitelbaum, Huffington Post
“Anouk Markovits’s I Am Forbidden contrasts the fates of a Hasidic family’s two daughters, one who breaks with tradition to pursue a life of intellectual and emotional freedom, the other who cleaves to convention only to find her childless marriage is leading her to consider a course of action that falls well outside her religious beliefs.”
—Megan O’Grady, Vogue
“[A] story that will resonate with anyone who's ever bucked family expectations to find their own way of life.”
—Oprah.com
“Markovits brings off this balancing act with skill and daring. Everyone is given their due. Instead of disrespect or easy judgment, there is generosity of spirit and delicacy of the pen… This is a book absorbing as any midrash and as enlightening as a library. I feel its contribution immediately and powerfully, and am happy to have given my time to it. I recommend you do the same.”
—Unpious
“A deeply felt account of people caught between worlds.”
—The Jewish Daily Forward, Shoshana Olidort
“In Anouk Markovits’s outstanding novel, the title words could apply to many scenarios within its pages: cultures, relationships, and expectations all provide constant obstacles to either rise above or muddle through. There are many delicate balancing acts, and through it all, Markovits’s characters shine through with determination and intelligence.”
—Historical Novel Society
“Tracing the Stern family from Transylvania to Paris and Brooklyn, [Markovits] focuses on daughter Atara and adopted daughter Mila, closer than close, until Atara wants more than the Satmar world can offer. Markovits plays fair: the believers are not stupid; their harsh world has beauty. We dwellers in the modern world know what “should” happen, but Markovits shows why, for those in the other world, it’s not that simple.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Markovits creates a vibrant, multilayered tale set within the conflicting obligations of faith and family."
—Booklist
“Orphaned during the Holocaust, two ultra-orthodox Jews bound by love and faith are driven apart by the same forces in a sensitive consideration of tradition and commitment. [A] sober, finely etched scrutiny of extreme belief set in a female context.”
—Kirkus
“Markovits immediately draws the reader in to a family saga of faith and longhidden secrets, set among the Hasidic Jews of eastern Europe and spanning four generations. A stunning novel; highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“I Am Forbidden moved me deeply. It brings many things wonderfully to life, including parts of history that I thought I knew but I now know better. Above all, it makes vivid the great comfort of strict religion, but also its sometimes painful confinement. I was swept away when I first read it. Now I am enlarged after reading it again.”
—John Casey, author of National Book Award winner Spartina and Compass Rose
“It is the rare novel that manages to be both achingly sympathetic and formidably honest. I Am Forbidden is both of these, and much more. Anouk Markovits's exploration of the obligations of faith—and the equally pressing obligations of the loving heart and inquisitive mind—is riveting.”
—Tova Mirvis, author of The Ladies Auxiliary and The Outside World
“In this gem of a book Anouk Markovits takes a reader to an exotic world, portrayed with such warmth and precision that the journey feels perfectly real and the characters become your intimate friends.”
—Lara Vapnyar, author of There Are Jews in My House
“In her intense and appealing novel on the Satmar pious enclave, migrating after the Holocaust from Transylvania to Williamsburg, Anouk Markovits scrutinizes with a sharp eye both sides of the human conflict between free choice and limitless obedience. It's a fierce and sometimes tragic struggle for happiness through belonging to a community closed in its tradition or through independence and individuality—involving mind and soul, integrity and ideal, hope and despair. The revelatory, well-structured narrative, focuses on a topic that goes beyond Jewish, Christian or whatever religious or non-religious dogma to the very core of many ardent tensions in our troubled modernity.”
—Norman Manea, author of The Hooligan’s Return
“This novel is truly a seminal work on the topic of Jewish Fundamentalism. With unparalleled detail and poignant storytelling, this saga of a Satmar family explores and debunks the myths upon which the extreme version of Judaism we know today was founded, and it does so with a resounding clang. I found myself gripping the edge of my seat quite a few times, holding my breath while I waited to see how the characters in this novel would find self-determination. People will read this novel both because it is a beautiful story told in a magical setting, and because it completely unravels a world heretofore tightly enclosed. I extend my deepest gratitude and admiration for Anouk Markovits, who so skillfully brought my world to life, and abolished the mysteries that remained of my childhood.”
—Deborah Feldman, author of New York Times bestseller Unorthodox
Library Journal
"I am forbidden, so are my children and my children's children, forbidden for ten generations male or female." With this opening line, Markovits immediately draws the reader in to a family saga of faith and long-hidden secrets, set among the Hasidic Jews of eastern Europe and spanning four generations. The story focuses on Atara, who rebels against the strict rules and rituals of her culture, and adopted sister Mila, who finds comfort and stability within the faith but struggles when she is unable to conceive a child. Raised in France, where she attended a religious seminary in lieu of high school, Markovits deftly weaves in copious information about Hasidic beliefs and the varieties of Jewish political thought during the 20th century while keeping the story intimate. Most important, she does not judge her characters but sympathizes with the human struggle in each, from Atara's rigidly devout Rebbe Zalman Stern, to Josef Lichtenstein, who can never quite forget the Christian woman who raised him as her own son during the war, to Atara herself, who thirsts for knowledge forbidden to her as a woman. VERDICT A stunning novel, the author's first in English; highly recommended.—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
JUNE 2012 - AudioFile
Questions of faith, morality, and tradition are at the center of Markovits’s novel of a Satmar Hasidic family. Rosalyn Landor recounts the lives of four generations of the Stern family as they escape, first, Transylvania and, then, Paris ahead of the Nazis, eventually settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The heart of the story is the relationship between Atara Stern and Mila, the girl raised as her sister, and the way their diverging experiences of faith shape and separate them. Landor brings a quiet reverence to the novel, helping the listener understand the beliefs and emotions of the conventional family members and of those who find themselves outside the bounds of tradition. J.L.K. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Orphaned during the Holocaust, two ultra-orthodox Jews bound by love and faith are driven apart by the same forces in a sensitive consideration of tradition and commitment. French-raised Markovits' English-language debut opens in Manhattan in 2005 with the meeting of two women: Atara, who, like the author, fled her Hasidic family to avoid an arranged marriage; and Judith, the granddaughter of Atara's adopted sister, burdened by a cataclysmic secret. Then the clock turns back to Transylvania in 1939, where Josef witnesses the murder of his family and is taken in by a Catholic farmer, and Mila is saved by Josef when her parents are murdered too. Rabbi Stern later rescues Josef and sends him to the U.S. while taking Mila into his own family. Stern's daughter Atara starts to question her father's beliefs and expectations, including limited education for women, and also researches a dark episode of Holocaust history involving Mila's parents and a revered Hasidic rabbi whose escape from Europe may have come at a very high price. When Mila and Josef marry, Atara abandons her family and disappears. The years pass but Mila doesn't conceive. Finally, when she does, desperate choices have been made by both husband and wife. Decades later, matters come full circle as Judith and Atara choose what matters most. Less a commercial family saga, more a sober, finely etched scrutiny of extreme belief set in a female context.
