SuitabookA brief chapter in my impossible life
Dana Reinhardt
- Reading
- Read alongside an unhurried conversation rather than treating Simone’s choices as lessons to copy. Pause around adoption, illness, sex, drinking and belief; ask what Simone feels, what remains uncertain and how other characters’ perspectives may differ.
- Themes
- Adoption, origins and belonging: Simone has always known she was adopted but initially does not want to know more; contact from Rivka prompts her to reconsider family and origins. The story appears to take Simone’s uncertainty seriously rather than presenting one uncomplicated definition of family.
- Faith and agnosticism: Simone questions what she has taken for granted about faith and the afterlife while encountering a birth mother estranged from a Hasidic family. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Growing up amid difficult choices: Simone manages school activities, attraction and friendship while the story includes sex, virginity, drinking and vomiting. These experiences form part of a realistic coming-of-age setting, but their consequences and the book’s judgement on them remain unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Before reading, consider whether discussion of casual sex, virginity, drinking and vomiting, strong language, cancer and emotionally difficult family circumstances fits the reader’s current needs. The treatment is described as realistic, humorous and hopeful, but reactions may differ.