Abomination by Ashley Goldberg

Abomination by Ashley Goldberg is set in my Melbourne. The characters drink at pubs I’ve been to, walk the streets I’ve walked and their stories are taking place in Melbourne, Australia right now, same as mine are.

In 1999 Ezra and Yonatan were best friends at an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school when allegations of sexual abuse to children by a teacher split the school community in two. Both sides of the community were outraged, but only one side wanted the perpetrator to be charged and punished according to Australian laws. The other side of the community wanted to keep the matter ‘in-house’ and deal with the issue internally, according their own religious laws.

Ezra’s father, who described their family as ‘twice-a-year Jews,’ immediately pulled his son out of school and took the family on an extended caravan holiday up the east coast of Australia, and on their return, enrolled Ezra into a state school, while Yonatan’s family supported those who helped the teacher to flee Australia for Israel. Ezra and Yonatan tried to continue their friendship, however Yonatan’s parents preferred him not to see Ezra and eventually they lost contact with each other.

Twenty years later, activists were still working to have the teacher extradited to Australia and sent invites to a rally to Ezra and Yonatan through social media, where they met at Parliament House in Melbourne, at the top of Spring Street.

By this time, Ezra and Yonatan’s characters had been formed and their lives were vastly different to each other’s. Ezra now identified as an atheist and worked for the government. He lived with his girlfriend who was not Jewish, and, much to his shame and self-loathing, continued to pursue other women for sex.

Yonatan had continued to live within the rules of the Orthodox Jewish community and was now a respected Rabbi and teacher at the school he and Ezra had attended. Yonatan’s marriage had been arranged, and after seven years of marriage his wife was pregnant.

By attending the rally, however, Yonatan had stepped outside of his community’s rules. He then took a further risk by inviting Ezra and his girlfriend to dinner for Shabbat, reminding his disapproving wife that one of their commandments was to try to return black sheep to their religious fold. The dinner went surprisingly well, until Ezra’s girlfriend let slip that the two men had reconnected at the rally, instead of at Glick’s Bakery as Yonatan had told his wife.

Although the characters in this story live within a community in Melbourne that I don’t know much about, I have enjoyed a pastry from Glick’s Bakery in Balaclava. The bakery is known for bagels and challah bread, although I didn’t realise the religious significance of the bread until I did some research while reading this novel.

But, back the the story. After Yonatan was caught in a lie to his wife, his position in the community fell until the way he was treated became untenable to him.

Abomination was a fascinating look at a religious world I don’t know much about, although I could see similarities to other religions, including hypocrisy relating to what was expected of the people in the community and what was actually happening. Another similarity related to my own religious upbring, what I was taught was supposedly ‘right’ and all other religious teachings ‘wrong,’ or at the very least, ‘misguided’.

There was a lot going on in this story and I’m not sure that all of the plot lines needed to be included. Yonatan’s story was particularly compelling and could have been the focus, although his and Ezra’s story provided a strong contrast to each other.

I also felt that the details of Ezra’s affairs and the pornographic ads that popped up on Yonatan’s computer screen were described too explicitly. These could have been conveyed with less detail and for me, the crudity of the accounts jarred with the rest of the story.

The book could also have done with a glossary of Hebrew words. By the end of the first page of the second chapter I had already looked up the meaning of words and expressions such as Chumash (the Torah in book-form), Modeh Ani (a prayer said by one of the characters on waking) and tzitzit (knotted fringes or tassles which are worn as a reminder to bring God’s love into action by practising other mitzvot {rules or commandments}). The flow of the story was constantly being interrupted by my need to learn what these words or phrases meant before I could move on in the story.

Despite these minor criticisms, I found Abomination to be a fascinating read. The characters were generally kind and thoughtful, their stories were believable and it goes without saying that I loved the contemporary Melbourne setting.

My purchase of Abomination begins my New Year’s resolution for 2023 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (January).

The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer as retold by Alfred J. Church

I’ve owned my copy of The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer as retold by Alfred J. Church since I was a teenager. I re-read Church’s version before starting on a Wordsworth Classics edition of George Chapman’s translation from 1611, but starting was as far as I got. I’m now on the hunt for a simpler translation for adults written in contemporary language.

The Iliad section of the book is about a war that started when Paris, a Trojan prince carried off Helen, who was the wife of Menelaus.

To sum up what happened next, Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, the Greek king of Kings gathered the Greek forces and took off after Helen and Paris to Troy where the Greeks and Trojans fought for years while the Gods intervened, favoring first one side and then the other until finally, ten years after the war began, the Greeks tricked the Trojans into allowing a wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers into their city walls, ending the war in favour of the Greeks.

I preferred The Odyssey section of the book, which told of Odysseus’ ten-year journey back to Ithaca after the war in Troy ended.

There aren’t many female characters of importance in either story, so I thought I would share a letter which I would have written to my mother-in-law had I been Penelope (Odysseus’ wife) to balance things out a little.

To my dear mother-in-law Anticleia,

Thank you for your most recent letter. I’m glad to hear that life in The Land of the Dead is to your liking.

Here in Ithaca, I are hoping that your son and my husband Odysseus will return home soon. It has been nine years since he left to fight the Trojans with King Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus, all because that silly Helen fluttered her pretty eyelashes at Paris who I’ve heard tell is equally as silly, beautiful and vain as Helen. Honestly, if Menelaus had any brains he would have said ‘good riddance’ to Helen and moved on, as there are plenty of other women in Sparta who would love to be the next Mrs M.

The war would have been over in a week if Achilles and Agamemnon hadn’t fallen out and Achilles fought the Trojans. Achilles is such a handsome fellow, he always reminds me a little of Brad Pitt, but by Zeus, can that man sulk!

The constant interference from the Gods hasn’t helped either. If only they would mind their own business and let us mortals get on with our own affairs.

Good news, though, I heard from my serving girl, who heard from the laundry woman, who heard from Agamemnon’s gardener’s wife that the war will end soon. The rumour is that Odysseus has thought up a very clever way to trick the Trojans with an epic display of horse-power.

If Odysseus is away any longer I am afraid that he won’t recognise our son when he returns, or worse, that Telemachus won’t know his father. Not only am I both mother and father to my son, but I am hounded by young men hanging around our home. Some of these young men say they love me, but I think that they actually covet Odysseus’ enormously big shed where he worked on his horse-powered chariots before leaving for Troy. I should have turned the shed into a craft room when I had the chance, as it would have been the perfect spot to house my weaving loom. Although lately, I’ve taken to crochet which I think pretty, and I find that my crochet hook is far more portable than the loom.

Regards, your loving daughter-in-law, Penelope.

P.S. Remember when Odysseus got lost coming home from Athens that time and was away for three years because he wouldn’t ask anyone for directions? Hopefully he has learned his lesson and this time will ask for directions if he gets lost on his way home from Troy once the war ends.

You didn’t really think I would leave you without providing a picture of Achilles looking very like Brad Pitt, did you?

The Iliad and the Odyssey were books book forty-three and forty-four of my Classics Club challenge to read 50 classics before my challenge end date of August 26, 2023.