Review by Booklist Review
Reich is a fierce satirist, tackling the traditions and contradictions, humor and travails of Jewish American life. Her seventh novel, following the short-story collection, The House of Love and Prayer (2023), is a fuming, fulminating, and wily response to the pitfalls of the #MeToo movement. Appalled by the convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, a different wealthy Jeffrey Epstein converts an old Catskills hotel and resort into an upscale center "for the re-education of #MeToo offenders." Camp Jeff attracts "true celebrities," including the narcissistic "literary powerhouse and public intellectual" Gershon Gordon. His churning, self-justifying inner monologue drives much of this saturated, caustic, relentlessly analytical novel punctuated by Talmudic passages about women and sex. Lonely staff member Hedy Nussbaum, with a PhD in rabbinic studies, forges a prickly alliance with Gershon and also narrates. As COVID-19 and new arrivals complicate the camp's mission, and Gershon foments an insurrection, Reich slyly takes on misogyny, hypocrisy, trendy therapies, genuine trauma, and antisemitism, the "oldest hatred in the world." An audacious and righteous torrent of wisecracks and ironies that coheres into a whirlwind of "divine apocalyptic madness."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this barbed if uneven satire, Reich (Mother India) takes on the #MeToo movement and the contradictions of Orthodox Jews. In February 2020, 10 people facing sexual misconduct allegations arrive for rehabilitation at Camp Jeffrey Epstein, a former Catskills resort converted by the "good" Jeffrey Epstein, a businessman who wants to distinguish himself from his notorious namesake. Chief among the guests, of whom nine are men and seven are Jewish, is unrepentant "public intellectual" Gershon Gordon, who has taken to using a wheelchair to gain sympathy. At the camp, he abandons the manuscript he's been attempting to finish for decades and sets out to write a nostalgic account of time spent in the company of the "bad" Jeffrey Epstein. Eventually, Gordon marries rehabilitator Hedy Nussbaum, a meek and masochistic Talmud scholar, after she's fired for neglecting her duties, and conceives a plan to take down the camp. Reich's critique loses focus as the novel eviscerates the moral failings and physical appearances of all the characters, but there are some inspired moments, such as the increasingly chaotic first meeting between the female rehabilitators and their recalcitrant charges. Fans of absurdist comedy ought to take a look. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Sacred cows of all sorts are skewered by Reich in a broad satire of contemporary mores. Gershon Gordon, a "world famous literary powerhouse and public intellectual," is a resident at Camp Jeff, a reeducation center for those who have found themselves implicated by the #MeToo movement--or caught in the hashtag, as Reich wryly puts it. The camp is named after its benefactor, the "good" Jeffrey Epstein, a cosmetics tycoon who refuses to let his name be ruined by the infamous bearer of the same name. Gershon's own name is a refinement of his given name, George Gordon, also the name of Lord Byron as well as a Protestant who led riots against Catholics mentioned in Dickens. Slippery nomenclature is just one of many verbal sleights of hand Reich plays in her densely packed narrative of Gershon's attempts to game the systems at Camp Jeff for his own purposes. The primary therapeutic method at Camp Jeff is Zoyaroyan Psychoempathy--named after one of at least three Zoyas playing a part in the novel--which allows Reich to take aim not only at sexual predators but at purveyors of sketchy self-help models. As the madcap plot unfolds, Reich explores themes of antisemitism, Jewish culture in America, and misogyny. At several points along the way to the novel's apocalyptic resolution, she takes a deep dive into Talmudic studies, too. With the book taking place just before and during the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mass hysteria and uncertainty surrounding that disruption comports nicely with the general tone of upheaval as old rules give way to the new. Stereotypes of many sorts--the stern nurse, the mousy female academic, the pederest priest--are present in the cast of characters Reich uses to make her point. Reich comically airs out many grievances. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
