>With one of the least appealing titles I've ever come across and the sort of cover that sets my teeth on edge, Elise Esther Hearst's debut novel One Day We're All Going to Die was not a book I ever felt tempted to read... until the librarian who hosts Book Chat at the Sandringham Library mentioned that she was reading it, and loving it. And even then, because (a-hem) because we are of different generations with reading tastes that rarely coincide, I was listening but not intending to follow up on it... until she mentioned that it was set in the suburb where I spent my teenage years. Nostalgia overtook me. It was booked solid at the Sandy library, but my local had a copy, and here we are.

Still, I had doubts when I read the blurb.

Sorrow and Bliss meets Normal People in this utterly compelling, darkly humorous millennial coming-of-age novel about a 27-year-old single Jewish woman in Melbourne who must learn to reconcile family expectations, cultural constraints and inter-generational trauma with her own desires. A coruscating new voice.

Hmm.

Twenty-something angst is not something I ever felt. Especially not the sort of angst that comes partly from a failure to disentangle oneself from parental expectations. Naomi at 27 has a great job at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (which is obviously this, most recently visited by me for the Chagall exhibition). But as the blurb says, she is trying to be a normal person who works at a Jewish Museum, who cares for lost things, found things, sacred things, and her family. But she finds herself going on bad blind dates, having cringe-worthy sex, a tumultuous, toxic affair, and falling for a man called Moses.

Fortunately Naomi has a gay non-Jewish BFF called Gemma who not only keeps her grounded but also saved the novel for me. Gemma is the kind of friend who knows what you're thinking before you do, and who knows when you have fallen for someone totally wrong for you but doesn't talk to you like your mother does. Who is free from the existential Jewish issues about identity, history and the imperative to marry within the community.

Gemma had grown up in Bendigo and only moved to the city for uni. Maybe once a month I would bring Gemma along to a Shabbat dinner at my parents' place. My family weren't religious. We were cultural Jews, 'prawn cocktail Jews', (my mother's little joke), who didn't talk about God and still had Shabbat dinner each week and said prayers by rote without thinking about what they meant. Even though my parents rarely attended, they still paid their membership fees to the local Reform synagogue, [this one] which ensured recognition on special occasions and my father a High Holy Day ticket for Yom Kippur, where he would pray fast, doggedly, and then return to his position of religious ambivalence the following day. But when Gemma had first come for Shabbat, I lamented my family not being more observant, because if they were the Shabbat would have been more of a spectacle. I wished my parents had more clutter — more tchotchkes — and didn't live so tastefully. Cookie made up for it though, telling Gemma that she was insulting us by not eating enough. Gemma had smiled gleefully at that and spooned more potatoes and sweetened carrots onto her plate. (p.42)

Although there is rather a lot of weeping, there is also a lot of laughter (and mostly awkward lust). This is not a sentimental novel, and Hearst pokes fun at taboos.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/03/06/one-day-were-all-going-to-die-2023-by-elise-... ( )