Average Rating:

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The Believers

by: Zoë Heller

September 25, 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, and the matriarch who dominates the book is so relentlessly unpleasant that I was absolutely indifferent to her fate. Her appalling selfish cruelty towards all her children was implausible and unquestioned by any of her family or friends. Her children were all equally unattractive and, despite their grim family background, I felt no sympathy for their fates.
None of them seemed to learn anything about themselves and none of them seemed truly affected by the death of their father. There were no moving or telling encounters between mother and children, just a lot of vicious ... Read More: