The Believers Book

I did not get this book AT ALL. Having read and enjoyed Notes on a Scandal (and if you can get past THAT premise you're good to go for just about anything) I was sure I would like her new one.
Well. For one thing, while she is an eloquent writer with a nice vocabulary, she seems to have fallen into this new wave writing style of 'how many details can I toss in to seem perceptive?' Yes theoretically I could write aobut my daily commute in my novel and tell you about how my metro card didn't go through the first time, much to the dismay of the people behind me, and how the steps were filthy and Ir an down only to just miss my train and how frustrating that is, but, um, do we care? I think that reality TV has had a strong impact on what we think we need to express in the written word.
The second issue I take with this work is its characters - none of them are likeable. The mom, Audrey, is disgusting. She has only the nastiest things to say, ostensibly unprovoked, to her best friend, husband, and kids. There is nothing charming about her harshness, it is only shocking and out of place. Her kids range from the same endearing personality to completely vapid and passive. One character to the next oozed dysfunction and edge with no redeeming feature. In addition, after you are so weirded out by the extent of Audrey's obnoxiousness (like when she yells at her husband's mistress 'you whore' and her daughter just assumes she's the one being addressed, because, you know, that's normal for them) which seems to have no explanation, Heller GIVES you an explanation. two thirds through and Heller's narrative which is all aobut tell and not show interrupts to say, sotto voce, this plucky woman uses obnoxiousness as a defense mechanism, perhaps now it has gone too far. Well that nice little decoy didn't endear me much either.
The overall premise is that Audrey who, when you first meet her, seems incredibly boring, seems to fall rather quickly and inexplicably for loud mouthed slick lawyer (a Jew, go figure - thanks Zoe) and they decide to marry after one night together, and go save the world. You then meet their kids forty years later who are either addicted to heroine, sadly overweight and unhapily married, or snippy and annoying. The dad has a stroke and now a big secret (sadly predictable) is unfolded - weirdly enough, this is supposed to be a huge catalyst and yet no one in the book seems to actually care or respond to it in any effective way.
Rosa, the oldest, finds Judaism much to her mother's rather opbvious disgust, and goes to Monsey for Shabbos to experience a weekend that I was appalled by. She is bossed around by some little snot who waits outside the bathroom door to make sure she doesn't turn off the light then has a freak out when Rosa forgets and turns it off, then makes sure to tell everyone about it, and then she gets reprimanded for it (after already being reprimanded for getting lost and missing candle lighting - yup that's exactly how we treat someone we are introducing to the faith). She is chastised for carrying a toothbrush to the bathroom (we don't do that on Shabbos - it counts as work!) and she is called a goy by one of the younger girls. She is told rather plainly that she is a man hating woman's libber by asking one of the girls if she will be having a bat mitzvah since 'the orthodox don't do that, only the watered down, we feel left out reform.' The family seems to care more about the carpet and the matching curtains than their guest. Having spent countless Shabboses (some in Monsey) with people who are new or flirting with the faith, I don't know where she got this from but it was so completely unrealistic and overblown - generally if you are that hellish you do not look to bring people into your home like this, and the guest doesn;t generally want to return. Somehow she manages to come back for Rosh Hashana though Gd only knows why (Heller certianly doesn't explain) and we are treated to interesting yet wholly unrealistic dialogue between Rosa and the rabbi about Judaism - so I guess this is where the belief stuff comes in, but that was it - there was nothing else, just BD Dayehu style of dailogue (cue diatribe here for several paragraphs that no human would actually speak) that somehow does it for Rosa such that she is wearing a 'fetchingly biblical' headscarf at the end of the novel (without actually having gotten married - glad you know about the tooth brushing, Zoe, maybe get your facts checked about hair covering).
The book doesn't appear to be about anything - there are a lot of red herrings and a lot of unrealistic character shifts which I guess are meant to depict growth yet it doesn't appear that anyone changes for the better or that the changes can be attributed to anything, or, for the life of me, how this is about believers?? It seems to be about misdirected and mistaken people fumbling through life.