Review: "Numb to This" by Kindra Neely

 

Numb to This by Kindra Neely
Published October 2022 by Little, Brown Ink
★★★★

This is a wonderful, painful take on trauma and its aftermath. It will resonate with a far, far wider audience than anyone would like to admit—because mass shootings are no longer rare, and neither are other mass attacks (half an hour after I finished reading this, I got a news notification on my phone about a mass stabbing). What disturbs me is not the content itself (that numbing effect at play...): what disturbs me is that I don't even remember the shooting Neely is talking about. There have been so many others.

What's so powerful about Numb to This, I think, is that it captures the sense of collective trauma as well as individual trauma...and also that Neely's story is not a standout one: she was there, she survived, she wasn't shot, her story isn't bloody or gory. It's numbing, and I'm so glad that there's never a question of whether or not this trauma is "valid." There are questions of how well Neely is or isn't handling the aftermath, and what her options are for processing, but there's never any question of how traumatic it is.

This is needed in school libraries.

Review: "Brazen" by Julia Haart

 

Brazen by Julia Haart
Published April 2022 via Crown
★★

Haart's is a story of extremes, from extreme religion to the frankly bizarre world of fashion and money. The out-of-religion story is interesting, but...the book could have used a ghostwriter and/or more intensive editing. I know nothing about Haart other than what is in this book (apparently there's something about a reality show?), so I went in relatively blind, but for all that the peek into strictly Orthodox Judaism is interesting (and more or less in line with what I've read from other writers who left the religion), the general tone of the book falls...somewhere between 'overshare' (I am not a prude, but I do not need to know the exact shape of your orgasms, thanks) and 'un-self-aware'.

And the thing is: Haart acknowledges, more than once, that when she went out into the 'outside' world as an adult (older than I am now), it was something like having her adolescence in her forties: she'd been largely responsible for her siblings' care from a young age and never truly allowed to make her own decisions about...just about anything. It makes sense that we'd see some 'young' mistakes and some immaturities. But...but the writing.

There's a tendency towards superlatives and exaggerations here: A dress isn't ugly, it's the ugliest dress I had ever seen (118). Her face isn't swollen from cheap makeup, it's swollen to ten times its regular size (125). The scenery isn't repetitive, There's literally nothing to see. It's the most boring drive imaginable (148). Designer clothing isn't overpriced, it's the most expensive clothes on earth (393).

My Kindle is old enough that it won't let me search books anymore, so I can't count how many times these words appeared, but the short version is 'too many': literally, beautiful, massive, basically, tiny (always with reference to her body—but never any deviation to 'petite', 'small framed', 'small boned', 'short', etc.), obsessed, stunning, super, fabulous, sexy, glamorous, incredibly...

It's just—it's not lost on me that Haart has made a career for herself in the fashion world (her current title/role is a mystery to me, but I can't be fussed to find out), and a designer should be able to describe a dress in a more creative and detailed way than 'beautiful', no? a beautiful blouse with a high collar and beautiful sleeves with ruching at the wrists... (92)

I'm sorry we don't see more of the other stories Haart touches on: at one point she says that her ex-husband no longer observes the strict rules of their community and has adopted a (relatively) more liberal Judaism; at another point she speaks scathingly of a girl she knew in what I can only describe as fundamentalist Jewish finishing school—a girl who went to sleep at 4:00 A.M. every night and woke up literally nine minutes before we were supposed to get to class. I was horrified by Tzirel's lackadaisical attitude...I know she failed every class she took (84). The latter character is particularly interesting to me because Haart makes a big deal of this school being extremely exclusive and accepting only the crème de la crème of fundie Jewish girls—so I read this and think, was she depressed? Or did she just have it figured out long before Haart, and she knew better than to want to excel in this restrictive life? But it doesn't seem to occur to Haart that there might be a story there.

Hardly the worst thing I've read, but there are better written books out there about both fundamental religion and fashion.