Cammy Sitting Shiva

Cammy is an absolute mess. She’s 29, a temp worker writing marketing drivel living in a literal basement in New York City whose dreams of writing (anything, anything at all) remains elusive. She’s a somewhat reluctant member of the Drama Collective, a group that meets weekly to share writing snippets and ideas for plays, but whose members she hasn’t really been able to connect with—their perceived haughtiness putting her own life in uncomfortable spotlight. Who are they to think so highly of themselves? They haven’t achieved anything! (and yet neither has she) At Drama Collective Gretchen’s birthday party, Cammy faces a terrible thought when the birthday girl exclaims, “I’m thirty! I’m almost dead!” Cammy is also ‘almost dead’ and has achieved nothing. But before she’s able to spiral, she gets a call from her hometown rabbi—her father has died. Cammy wants to run from the fear of failure, and it’ll take the death of her father, the subsequent trip home to New Jersey and a terrible seven days of shiva for her to truly sink to her lowest before capable of rising again (a character arc that so wonderfully mirrors the actual shiva ritual).

Immediately, I connected with Cammy. At 29, I was nearly her equal in every regard. I was also struggling to find meaningful work, meaningful connections and juggling the self-deprivation of not having achieved my dreams. I had a strained relationship with my own mom. I had graduated from university with heaps of accolades poured upon me by my professors that I was going to be ‘something’ and yet found myself unable to make lasting friendships and drowning in the pain of not having ‘made it’ with my writing yet. I also found living in the ‘big city’ (my Chicago to Cammy’s New York City) was an act I viewed as evidence of having ‘made it’ – Chicago was a light upon the hill, a beacon of civilization where the real things happened, and shunned the suburb I’d spent much of my youth. 

Cammy was a mess, and yet a delight to read—she made horrible choices, all of which are sympathetic, as the reader is aware of how she’s running from facing her own grief and her terrible failures. Despite so much pulling her back home to New Jersey, she cannot help but feel as though moving home would mean ‘accepting defeat’ – letting down her father, her esteemed mentor and teacher, and everyone who doubted her. Even though so much is painfully self-inflicted, Cammy makes so many self-centered choices, each of which  slowly helps her gets down from her (very) high horse. Only at your lowest, do you see what you still have.

The idea of getting a ‘second act’ in life is delightfully sprinkled through out the book and the various secondary characters, offering Cammy a ray of hope in an otherwise depressing point in life. I loved the supporting characters, each of whom challenged Cammy’s ideas of ‘settling’ and ‘giving up on your dreams.’ Nick Ramos, especially, was a character I adored. Another character who was told he was going to ‘make it big,’ his entire trajectory is destroyed after an accident that made his dreams impossible. He shared a descent into self-loathing with Cammy that offered a wonderful moment of connection and offered possibility—that even when your dreams are dashed, it’s possible to find meaning and keep living. But I also loved this character, too, for the way it helps to show that telling children that they are going to be something big can have the opposite affect—that adult adoration can be disastrous to their mental health if they aren’t able to achieve those standards.

Although shiva is a central plot point, the book honestly doesn’t include all that much Jewish practice. Cammy is distant from Jewish practice, eating nonKosher foods in many scenes, avoiding her family’s rabbi, and generally dissing religion at any offered opportunity. I think I would have loved to see a moment of her actually attending shiva—the titular ritual is actually absent as Cammy avoids it every. single. day. In some ways, this book isn’t entirely Jewish at all—the character arc deals more with her facing the problems in her life rather than running from them, problems that aren’t solved through a connection to her people but from the nonJewish people in her life. Her love interests are all nonJews, her mentor is a nonJew, and her own Jewish father shuns religion as well. Even Jewish ritual is repeatedly described as stifling and sometimes even blamed for Cammy’s bad choices (she wouldn’t have snuck out of the house to party if the shiva wasn’t such a terribly forced institution of mourning). She doesn’t have a ‘come around’ moment with her Jewishness unlike other aspects of herself. 

All of that doesn’t detract from my joy in reading this book. Cammy has a wonderfully earned redemption arc that left me crying for the last 30 or so pages. At the book’s conclusion, I had the joy of sitting in a comfortable aftermath of a beautifully earned redemption story. Cammy’s recklessness might scare some readers away, but those who can see a character running from facing uncomfortable facts will be rewarded with an incredible character journey.

Note: BookishlyJewish received an e-arc from the publisher

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DEKE MOULTON (she/her) (rhymes with ‘geek’) is a writer currently living in the US Pacific Northwest. She is a former US Army drill sergeant and trained as an Arabic linguist during her time in service. Don’t Want to Be Your Monster, her debut book, won the Sydney Taylor Book Award Honor Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Middle Grades of 2023. Her follow up, Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf, is a Sydney Taylor Notable Book and a Jewish Book Council middle grade finalist. She is represented by Rena Rossner with the Deborah Harris Literary Agency.