Shmutz is the first novel by American author, Felicia Berliner. Raised in a Hasidic home, eighteen-year-old Raizl is only permitted to attend Cohen college to study accounting because of her Mami’s persuasive reasoning with her Tati. The third child in the family, Raizl is smart and has won a scholarship that ensures no expense, and also provides a laptop.

The great rabbis have decreed that the Internet is, of course, forbidden, but her student advisor, unaware of this, happily shows Raizl how to google, to find anything she wants to know. Her very strict father has the internet at home for his own work, though, and, good and observant Jewish girl that she is, it’s a perfectly innocent search of a religious nature that drops her into porn sites. She is shocked, yes, but also curious.

Her eldest brother already married, and twenty-year-old (secretly pot-smoking) Moishe having rejected a match, it’s time for Raizl to start meeting some of the suitable young men the matchmaker has found.

But she’s holding off: which good young man is going to find her suitable when she’s addicted to watching internet porn? “He is indeed exactly what he should be. Only she is not who she should be, and this is her trap, wanting this man to be what he is, but also wishing he could be just a little different.”

Her visits to a therapist are, not as her Mami believes, to help her overcome her fear of marriage, but rather to overcome her addiction. So far, it’s not working...

At college, her conservative clothing makes her stand out, until she begins associating with a goth trio who love her naivete and her mother’s cooking. And Raizl begins secretly experimenting: non-Kosher food, and clothing of which her pious mother would definitely disapprove.

She rationalises her choices, trying to reconcile them with her religious beliefs. Her course-work, meanwhile, is suffering from sleepless nights with her laptop under the blankets in the bedroom she shares with her younger sister. What will it take to stop her watching?

As Raizl discovers a culture and customs so very different from her own, the reader less familiar with the Hasidic culture may, similarly, be learning about the customs of what seems like a newly-discovered tribe. Shmutz is Yiddish for, among other things, smut and, indeed readers should be aware that there are quite a few sexually explicit scenes.

It’s easy to empathise with Raizl, a young woman, discovering her own sexuality, making some (perhaps uninformed) choices and unsure where to look for guidance. Her inner monologue is often blackly funny and, bizarrely, her descriptions (in Yiddish) of what she watches seem less offensive than they might in plain English. Berliner provides a handy glossary of Yiddish words.

For some readers, Raizl’s needing to learn Yiddish sex words may be reminiscent of the singular experience of the migrant child whose religious parents never spoke a sex word in the home, returning to her birth country and using innocuous-seeming expressions which unexpectedly carry innuendo.

Berliner takes a novel premise and executes it with originality, humour and understanding. An outstanding debut novel.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.