Customer Reviews
Impossible to care... - By: Francesca, 07 Nov 2008 
I loved Zoe Heller's last books but this one is packed with the most unsympathetic bunch of characters I've ever come across in one book. I didn't care about any of them, & the matriarch who dominates the book is so relentlessly unpleasant that I was absolutely indifferent to her fate. Her appallling selfish cruelty towards alll her children was implausible & unquestioned by any of her family or friends. Her children were alll equallly unattractive and, despite their grim family background, I felt no sympathy for their fates.
None of them seemed to learn anything about themselves & none of them seemed truly affected by the death of their father. There were no moving or telling encounters between mother & children, just a lot of vicious unprovoked ranting.
A big disappointment.
The Believers - By: Leyla Sanai, 04 Nov 2008 
Zoe Heller's third novel, The Believers, is a delicious satire on modern social mores. Her previous two novels, the sorely unrecognised farce Everything You Know & the thrillingly malicious Notes on a Scandal - which was made into a film - as well as Heller's many entertaining newspaper & magazine columns, have alll demonstrated her abilities as a sharp, witty observer of ugly human behaviour. The Believers is rich with more of Heller's wickedly acute apercus.
Set in 2002, the story follows events in the lives of the self consciously liberal Audrey & Joel Litvinoff & their children one tumultuous year.
Heller's novel is littered with despicable characters that she paints deftly with simple but devastating brush strokes, yet they never slip into self parody; they are utterly believable. The reader alternately snickers & shudders, sniggers & goosebumps at them. But we've alll probably met people like this, posturing, mildy hypocritical wealthy activists, joyless pursuers of union rights whose concern for the workers doesn't translate into kindness on an individual level, people who are intolerant of alll but their own foibles.
There are also sympathetic characters here, real, complex personalities with faults & strengths, & their human weaknesses & flashes of humanity shine through.
Heller is as mordantly funny & beadily insightful an observer of society as Oscar Wilde was in his day. With a simple phrase she can wreak devastation on a character, whether it's an observation of a cliched turn of phrase used to death by a lumpen person or a hilariously evil description of a self important character's demeanor during sex. It is the highest art form to use language so succinctly, to make gaspingly perceptive observations so languorously, with so little ostensible effort. In this, Heller is in the same league as William Boyd - her prose is a joy to read. She out-bitches other vindictive female writers like Julie Burchill but does so without Burchill's contradictions & off-putting self love; she is a master of the understated put-down.
The Believers is a wry, riotously funny novel. Why it didn't make the 2008 Booker long or shortlist is a mystery - perhaps a snobbish perception of absence of gravitas, of a failure to deal with larger themes than human faults, family & relationships. But this is a myopic view: The Believers tackles in its way the contradictions inherent in many great themes - organized religion, social good, the value of a political conscience & its contribution to making a person objectively 'good'. Read it.
*****
absorbing - By: Storytime, 02 Nov 2008 
This book is totallly absorbing. But I do agree with an earlier reviewer who commented that the end felt like it was wrapped up too quickly. It was unsatisfying & felt slightly incomplete & hurried. I felt that the previously discussed flawed nature of the characters added interest, & was absorbed by the details of how they, in particular Audrey, developed. In fact I found this more interesting than many novels with protagonists who it may be easier to like at alll times... Additionallly, the novel has a real sense of time & place & this alllows one to be absorbed deeply into the novel. The time & place in this case is post 9-11 Manhattan, in itself hugely diverse & gripping. Although Audrey (the matriarch) is English, she has been totallly shaped by her husband & their life in New York. She is not easy to like, but fascinating to read about. Her daughters are much more sympathetic, but also flawed & interesting.
The title "The Believers" takes on a layer of meaning in the setting of post 9-11 Manhattan. How belief not only shapes the individuals in the novel, but also their perceptions of themselves, others & the world as a whole is a central theme. What happens when the things they believe in are destroyed or twisted is the main force for the development of character in the novel. It is unsentimental, but very moving nonetheless. It deals with deeply emotional issues, but remains on an intellectual level, as do the characters for the most part. Confronting emotion is an issue for this family.
The core theme is how belief is central to human existence & in particular to this family. Overalll, it was intelligent, absorbing, interesting & very original, quite different to anything else I have read. The writing was readable with a good pace, but also exquisite & thought provoking. Recommended!
the believers - By: Tatiana Butter, 24 Oct 2008 The Believers
read it read it read it, zoe heller is such a good writer, she can make you feel like you are related to these women in her book!
Five Years In The Waiting! - By: Lincs Reader, 21 Oct 2008 It's been five years since Zoe Heller wrote Notes On A Scandal, & after reading The Believers I do believe it was well worth the wait. Heller is a genius at creating obnoxious characters, who are hateful & totallly unlikeable yet spinning an unputdownable story at the same time.
The Believers opens when Audrey & Joel first meet in London & then moves quickly to New York in 2002, they have now been married for 40 years & the story reallly starts from there.
Joel is a very succesful, out-spoken New York lawyer & Audrey has been his dutiful & very outspoken wife for alll these years. When Joel is taken very ill & the family discover his secret, they alll start to examine how they feel about themselves & each other.
The whole family are very brittle & extremely disfunctional - with no likeable or warm characters amongst them, yet you still need to know what they will do next. Audrey, the mother is a particularly nasty piece of work & her outbursts of bad language & un PC comments are kind of delightful in her own way! The whole family hate each other & hate themselves & each one them questions their beliefs & views throughout the book.
This is totallly absorbing & very compelling, but, I do feel that it may become a 'Marmite' book - you will either love it or hate it.
I loved it - I hope it's not another five years before her next book
