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Friday December 8, 2006

This ‘Shiksa’ isn’t one to write home about

by tracy salkowitz
correspondent

Tracy McArdle, entertainment publicist extraordinaire, had high hopes in publishing “Confessions of a Nervous Shiksa.” I had high hopes reading it, figuring that this book would be an absolute hoot.

One of us had our hopes sorely dashed. This book isn’t about a shiksa. To me a “shiksa” is a woman involved in a relationship with a Jewish guy. Everyone else simply isn’t Jewish. I just couldn’t get past thinking that Ms. McArdle chose the title of her book because she figured it could best entice the Jewish book-buying public.

This book is a tale about a jilted, unforgiving woman, Alexis, who whines for 350 pages because she gets dumped for not wanting to convert. Both Alexis and her Jewish fiancé, David, drew their lines in the sand and couldn’t budge.

Mind you, I don’t believe in forced conversion and my heart goes out to couples struggling with interfaith relationships. But David is not evil incarnate, and Alexis’s bitchy unforgiving attitude drove me up the wall. The protagonist simply couldn’t get over that David would deign even to ask her to think about it. Shoring her up are friends who can’t believe what a Neanderthal David is, affirming her decision.

It would have been more forgiving if she dealt more sensitively with the struggle that the Jewish fiancé was going through. It would have been more forgiving if the protagonist had done some soul-searching about what it all really meant. That’s not to say that the decision should have been different, but a little soul-searching would have helped. It certainly would have made her look more sympathetic.

The book isn’t a total loss, in that the writer knows her Hollywood publicity stuff. The insider look was enjoyable and even insightful. There are some fun scenes and escapades. Unfortunately, these were blips and did not lift the book up out of its morass of whining.

“Confessions of a Nervous Shiksa” by Tracy McArdle (368 pages, Downtown Press, $13).

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