Publishers Weekly
09/18/2023
This provocative coming-of-age story from Berger (Maidenhead) raises questions about sexuality, power, and the intersection of the personal and the political. In the summer of 2006, 20-something Yara arrives in Israel thinking mostly about the unnamed girlfriend she has left behind in Brazil. Her meddling mother, who’s never suffered from a lack of male admirers, wants the same for Yara, and engineered the Birthright trip with the intention of breaking up the couple. Unlike the Canadians she is thrown in with, Yara has very little knowledge of her Jewish heritage or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and receives a crash course in both. Berger counterpoints Yara’s immersion with flashbacks; in one such episode, her mother makes her get a nose job at 15. When the Canadians learn Yara’s girlfriend is 10 years older and that they met when Yara was underage, they try to convince her that she was sexually abused. Much of the insightful narrative involves Yara trying to resolve this question for herself, and Berger strengthens the story with subtle connections between Yara’s personal struggles and the conflict in Israel. There are no easy answers in Berger’s engrossing latest. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"There are no easy moments, no comfort to be found in the searing prose. . . . When writers get young female sexuality right, stories become a revelation and such is the case with Maidenhead. The writing pulls the reader desperately close." – Roxane Gay on Maidenhead, The Rumpus
"Myra's confusion, her passion, her need for possession and to be possessed, make this novel an incredible read, finding its place, as Sheila Heti (who should know) wrote, 'somewhere between the wilds of Judy Blume, Girls Gone Wild and Michel Foucault.'" – Flavorwire, on Maidenhead
"Raw, powerful, political, and compassionate, albeit with sharp elbows. 'There are no forsaken human beings,' writes Berger, and, indeed, through the cacophony of voices, violence, sex, and family conflict we get the shining ability of humans to survive, and the beauty that the buds of forgiveness finally enclose." – Amber Sparks on Queen Solomon
"Berger's writing is significant, poignant and consciously uncomfortable. Her portrait of female sexuality is daring, original and troubling. Berger's language is crass; this isn't missionary-style 'love-making.' This is dirty, animalistic sex. This is pornography rubbing up against the literary establishment." – Telegraph-Journal on Little Cat
"I bought this book hoping for good masturbation material, but honestly my mind was too blown to even move my hand." – Miranda July on Kuntalini
"Tamara Faith Berger has been writing challenging and sexy books for more than a decade." – The Believer on Kuntalini
"From peace (shalom) to scapegoat to porn, Yara is a coming-of-age story with metafictional moments." – Michael Greenstein, Miramichi Reader
"This provocative coming-of-age story from Berger raises questions about sexuality, power, and the intersection of the personal and the political." – Publishers Weekly
"With each successive book, the author has discovered greater control over her material; Yara represents her most fully realized vision yet. Intricate and morally uncompromising, the novel operates at the nexus of identity, sexuality, politics, and family." – Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
"Berger set out to situate a young woman’s sexual struggles within a broader web of connections, but without ever losing the immersive feeling of a page-turner – politics are present, but the book is also not an allegory." – Jean Marc Ah-Sen, The Globe and Mail
"This novel is told vividly and directly, and it will leave readers with much to consider and question. Tamara Faith Berger is utterly unflinching, both in depicting human sexuality and posing difficult ethical quandaries. This is the kind of book that really highlights how avoidant so many novels are when it comes to exploring these fundamental pleasures and problems." – Keith Mosman, Powell's Books
