A Place for People Like Us
A young woman is molded by a charismatic friend and a new lover in the fraught coming-of-age novel A Place for People Like Us.
Hannah is determined to succeed at her prestigious business school despite her lack of money and connections. Having grown up in a cult, survived sexual abuse, and gotten clean from drugs, she is underprepared for her feelings for her seductive rocker roommate, Jillian, who wakes up some of her vices. Being with Jillian, Hannah observes, is like “having a close, personal relationship with the sun.” She is also thrown by Naftali, the Orthodox Jewish classmate whom she trauma bonds with. After they sleep together, he begins to speak about marriage—if she converts.
Hannah’s story develops at whirlwind speed, her buttoned-up aspirations fading behind the warring temptations represented by Jillian and Naftali. Jillian also comes from an Orthodox background; she is befuddled by Hannah’s interest in conversion and resists the traditions of her youth. Though Hannah adds frum clothing to her closet and begins to observe Shabbat, the fire between the women remains. It complicates Hannah’s engagement, new parenting, and married family life, forcing her to reexamine her tendency to camouflage herself in others’ beliefs.
Multiple years are covered in a short span, and the book’s progression has a sometimes feverish quality. The depth and authenticity of Hannah’s bonds with Naftali and Jillian is called into question by her unspoken doubts and by the revelation of lies; the reemergence of Hannah’s disgraced father is startling and underaddressed. Though Hannah’s refusal to self-advocate is a point of frustration for much of her story, it also makes her ultimate shedding of others’ expectations triumphant.
A woman too often enrobed in others’ worldviews comes into her own in the weighty bildungsroman A Place for People Like Us.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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