FEH: A Memoir

"FEH" is a memoir by Shalom Auslander that follows his attempt to escape the biblical story he was raised on and construct a new story for himself and his family. It is a fearlessly provocative and funny exploration of the story we have all been told for thousands of years.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 23 July 2024
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

ONE OF THE TIMES BEST LITERARY NON-FICTION BOOKS OF 2024 - Hurrah for one of our most merciless humorists! Auslander's prose isn't just laudable, it's frightening. - David Sedaris - From the acclaimed author of Foreskin's Lament, a memoir of the author's attempt to escape the biblical story he'd been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family. - Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. - The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called Feh. - Yiddish for Yuck. - FEH follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari, and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles. - Can he move from feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that? Auslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with-before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him-isn't sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt, and fearlessly provocative.

Weight: 606g
Dimension: 164 x 244 x 35 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781472159311