Reviews - Shmutz | The StoryGraph

496 reviews for:

Shmutz

Felicia Berliner

3.59 AVERAGE

cfreads13's review against another edition

3.0

took a long time to get into but then very interesting

greenlight421's review

Books about porn obsessed anybody really not my thing.

feelin_toasty's review against another edition

5.0

I love this book, it definitely had it's moments I'm definitely going to read it again. I love how morally grey the characters are.

kirbyworming's review against another edition

Read this book because of a hilarious staff recommendation at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. I don't have many complaints about it... it was fast-paced and funny and I enjoyed reading it, yet at the same time it sort of put me in a slump... I think it maybe got too repetitive at certain points? IDK. I don't have strong feelings about this.

lillianhpearce's review against another edition

notinjersey's review against another edition

5.0

When I first heard about the book Shmutz by Felicia Berliner, I was concerned that it would be yet another story that leans into the “religious Jews are oppressed” trope, as this is a book about a young women living in a very strict Hasidic community. I was pleased that while life in the community is shown as sheltered and not without difficulties, Raizl did not want to leave. Rather, she wanted to stay and be herself within the community. ⁣I appreciated the description of how, when Raizl received a computer for school, she was able to stumble into inappropriate internet content. She didn’t set out to find it but her natural curiosity about the things she was never taught led her there. It was understandable how an addiction could easily develop. I thought her discovery of her sexuality was important and portrayed positively. I was left wondering how she will move on from her internet use and whether her husband will understand her needs. The ending was a little ambiguous and makes us wonder about how Raizl is doing now. ⁣As a side note, I have seen this book compared to Milk Fed, and while they both include religious Jews, I felt that this book portrayed the community more accurately, while Milk Fed was misleading when it explained some of the laws. This does have a similar feel to that book though. ⁣There is a lot of Yiddish in this book and it does contain a glossary, but I was impressed with how much of it I understood! Shmutz itself is a Yiddish word meaning dirt.