Happy New Years by Maya Arad: A Contrarian’s View |
I very much enjoyed The Hebrew Teacher, the first of Maya Arad’s books to be translated into English. As in that work, Happy New Years is about an Israeli living in America. Leah’s story is told through an annual letter to her former classmates in a teacher training program, even though they treated her shabbily and only very rarely respond to her. There’s also a longer and more personal note to her one friend in the group.
It’s an uncommon structure, and well-executed. But the structure can’t make up for the protagonist’s flaws, especially her lack of self-awareness and stubborn refusal to learn from her mistakes. Leah is ordinary and unimpressive, and just not very interesting. She’s buffeted by life, and works to get through it, without any particular direction or goal. No mentors challenge her thinking or decisions. Leah is charming at first, but then it’s too much of the same thing, over and over. You want to shake her awake.
We see Leah choosing one inappropriate partner after another, pursuing multiple unlikely-to-succeed business ventures, and demonstrating an ongoing inability to make friends. She leaves us wondering what will happen next in her world of hairbrained schemes and inadvisable relationships. What bad advice will she follow, without any research, assessment or due diligence? Will she ever step back and introspect? Why doesn’t she even consider getting some help?
John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” Leah has the experiences, but fails to reflect on them, and so fails to learn. Several times she lets herself off the hook, dismissing responsibility for her own contribution to the situation. She doesn’t seek self-understanding, and doesn’t seem to be aware that such a thing exists, and that pursuing it can make life more meaningful and satisfying.
In pursuit of stability and financial security, Leah marries a much older American-born accountant who doesn’t seem to possess any positive qualities. The marriage explodes, and while the problem is her husband’s, she doesn’t ask herself why she didn’t see it, or what clues she might have missed. She doesn’t reflect on why she chose this man, or how she might make better choices next time.
We see the world as happening TO Leah. We’re supposed to understand her naivete and lack of agency as relics of a pre-feminist upbringing and products of past trauma and multiple relocations. But that’s not enough to excuse this level of clueless-ness, or to make it interesting.
Throughout the book, Leah retains her relentless, and unrealistic, optimism. If everything’s going to work out, there’s no reason to do the hard work of reflecting on past failures. Despite living in California, she seems to have no exposure to the human potential movement popular at that time. She never considers therapy, career coaching, or any other kind of development. Her heroes are those who’ve made money (and spent it), not those who’ve created lives worth living.
While Leah does achieve the occasional insight, it’s way too little, way too late. By the end of the book, Leah hasn’t evolved much at all. We don’t see her choosing appropriate men, pursuing sound business ventures, or advocating for her needs in a relationship. We do see her developing some friendships, many with much younger Israeli-American women, who turn to her for advice. I wanted to warn them to run the other way.
Leah reinvents herself, but not in ways that are transformative. She consistently misses the opportunity to confront her errors and learn from her mistakes. She’s the poster child for the unexamined life. By the end of the book, I’d had it with the protagonist. Certainly there are people like her, but why would I want to spend time with them?