A review by fuguballoon
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman

challenging emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

3.5

I read this book after watching the Netflix miniseries. I thought I had a handle on this book, but then I read the afterword (in a later edition of the book) where the author explained that she was motivated to write the book in order to get custody of her son in her divorce. It did change my feelings about the story a little bit. Not because that wasn't a totally fair reason, but I think because the descriptions of the steps she took to get out felt a little less intentional during my first read, whereas the afterword made it clear that there was a lot of planning behind the events described in the second half of the book. I think that speaks to how, even though there was a lot of descriptive detail in the book's events, I didn't feel like I understood the author as a person very well until I read the afterword, where she opened up a bit more about her frame of mind at the time. Overall, I definitely found the book engaging and emotional, and it was interesting seeing where the adaptation was based in fact versus fictionalized.
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