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Although her husband, Daniel, keeps kosher and observes the Sabbath, he does so "mechanically," with none of the joy that marked Deena's childhood religious celebrations: "What did remain were the things she couldn't do." Nonetheless, they have been together for seven years before trouble appears. In this case, trouble takes the form of a leggy blonde temp from Daniel's office, a Southern-accented would-be Miss America named Jill. She is, they agree, "fun," in a way none of their other friends are. Together with Jill and her friend Ann the couple tries skiing, takes up dancing--and then Daniel falls in love. As their relationship falls apart, so too does Daniel's attachments to the forms of his faith. He breaks the Sabbath, stops wearing his yarmulke, and starts eating shellfish: "He'd accept no burdens, not Jewishness, not marriage." Faced with the impending breakup, Deena must decide whether to retreat back into her past or forward into an unknowable future.
Abraham's clear-eyed, unsentimental novel is, more than anything else, about that choice: between the safety of childhood and the uncertainty of independence, between the religious life and the secular world. Flying over the ocean on her way to visit her parents, Deena dreams of a ship with Daniel and all her American friends on it, pulling away and leaving her floating alone in the waves: "She had to save her strength and learn to live in the water. She would become a fish." In Giving Up America, Pearl Abraham draws a subtle and compassionate portrait of marriage, divorce, and a woman at sea. --Mary Park
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