Isaac Blum
Author of The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen
About the Author
Image credit: https://www.isaacblumauthor.com/
Works by Isaac Blum
Tagged
Common Knowledge
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Members
- 112
- Popularity
- #174,306
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 4
- ISBNs
- 7
- Languages
- 1
The Life and Crimes follows Hoodie, a 15-year-old orthodox boy coming to terms with his religion, community, and antisemitism after his community begins to move to a small town. The book has a wonderful array of religious-specific set dressing that makes the book unique and honestly quite special, where orthodoxy is seen in a loving, if necessarily critical, light. Our main character breezes through with a Percy Jackson-like coolness, and the author's experience in "both worlds" made Hoodie a terribly believable, naive boychik, horny and emotionally repressed but with a heart of gold.
The book also delves into some intense, intense topics, that I think were dealt with well given the age group this is for but is honestly fucking horrifying and I believe would cause far more emotional damage. Hoodie is put in herem, and deals with the entire community and family shunning him. Uh??? And then the ending... woof.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this. It was easy to read, and you could tell the author put a lot of love and knowledge into it to be a book observant and ex-observant people could relate to. Very cool. Would recommend.… (more)