Today's Hideously Upsetting Thing

[browngirl]

Deals with the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and romance novels.



A writer named Kate Breslin wrote a romance novel about the director of a concentration camp in WWII and a Jewish prisoner interned therein, where the Jewish woman converts to Christianity, and is blocking Jewish people who try to discuss this with her on Twitter She has the full support of the Romance Writers of America and the book has been receiving kudos and awards nominations.

Normally I would reblog Bibliogato's posts about this on Tumblr where I found them, but I can't bear to reread them. It makes me feel so ill that Ms. Breslin thought this was a good idea and how many people support her in this.

So I've put links here, because I had to signal boost this somehow. If this book is receiving so many accolades the criticism of it should be heard as well.

Comments

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. That sounds incredibly icky.

[sdelmonte]

Sad to say, as the Holocuast recedes in history and fades from memory, it loses its meaning to more and more people, and anti-Semitism can find new footing.

[baranduin.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Just read the opening pages (as well as reviews on amazon). Bunch of purple prose. Ugh.

[katyhh.livejournal.com]

I had not heard of that, and already the thought disgusts me. I cannot fathom that anyone would be able to imagine any romance in such setting. They have no idea :( (

[caitri.livejournal.com]

This has been all over my FB recently. Admittedly I have a Very Special Part of the Internet, but there's a LOT of righteous rage flying. (Basically sometimes we DO have a tiny nugget of hope for the world. Tiny, but present.)

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Oh bleh. How disgusting.

Thanks for the alert on this. bb.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

This is nothing new, though it's still deeply creepifying. It's like they (I mean people like this author and other people who appropriate aspects of Judaism for their own purposes) hate and fetishize us simultaneously.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is staggeringly disgusting.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

wow. How...? That's really disgusting.

[branna.livejournal.com]

I am still trying to wrap my head around this one. There are not enough powers of WTF in the world.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That is disturbing. Deeply disturbing.

If it helps any, most of what I've seen about this is reactions similar to yours and your friends'. Presumably a lot of people must have liked the book, since it got nominated for an award but the folks in my neck of the internet aren't those people.

[med_cat]

What a terrible choice of subject...astonishing that anyone thinks this was a good idea...

[wickedladybear.livejournal.com]

I mean, what gets me just shaking my head, is the unmitigated *gall* of it. Sheer nerve and unbelievable arrogence.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

damn.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You know that part of my my family history so just sigh...........

The author would do damn well to read Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' and before anyone here rushes off to find it, PLEASE be in a good place first!

[capra-maritimus.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's too much to hope that the Jewish woman is depicted actually suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? No? Well, ew, then.

now we see the violence inherent in the system

[sethg]

This book seems to be raising hackles because it makes explicit an idea that a large subset of Christians take for granted (so they don’t need to say it) and that everyone else usually ignores (because they don’t hear it said): namely, that the real and transcendent purpose of Jews is to serve as bit players in Christianity’s apocalyptic drama. I mean, what do six million mortal deaths really matter, compared with the eternal torment of the damned?

Hmm. The Boston Public Library system has two copies. Do I dare...?

hi hi

[seabroth.livejournal.com]

I personally think it's fine to write whatever you want, but you definitely shouldn't block criticism and you definitely shouldn't get awards just for writing about any old "controversial" or "rare" topic (which seems to constantly be the case no matter how badly it was handled - like Memoirs of a Geisha).

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

full support of the Romance Writers of America and the book has been receiving kudos and awards nominations

I suppose RWA has to support it as a freedom-of-speech thing. But I do wonder who is giving out the kudos and awards nominations. Are they people we have any reason to take seriously?

OTOH, there are some very odd undercurrents in the romance genre. If I remember the description correctly, Sweet, Savage Love was a long tale of the heroine being kidnapped and raped by a series of powerful men. Eventually she gets back to her husband and rapes him at knifepoint. And it was one of the most successful romance novels of all time. Given that as context, the book you describe doesn't seem so odd.

[cellio]

Ew. Bletch.