Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Deana Abramowitz donated several books recently to the library. Today I would like to recommend one of them, a novel by Myriam Chapman titled, “Why She Married Him.” It was inspired by the unpublished memoir by the author’s grandmother.

Set in Paris in the early 1900s, Why She Married Him tells the story of Nina Schavranski, a beautiful young Russian Jewish émigré at a crossroads in her life. At 22, in the immigrant community of Belle Epoque Paris, Nina’s choices are few. She works in her father’s tailor shop, attends political lectures and night school, striving to be an intellectual, “modern” woman. But Nina’s sensual nature and her longing for freedom remain unfulfilled. The answer to the question of why she marries Abraham Podselver, a struggling fashion illustrator with socialist dreams, lies in the sum of Nina’s experiences—which unwind like a bolt of silk as the novel moves backward in time. We see Nina enjoy her first real love—who abandons her for better opportunities in America. We see the Schavranskis when they first arrive in Paris, struggling to make it out of the Marais ghetto. We see the family in Yekaterinoslav in Ukraine, where they enjoyed a comfortable, cultured life until a series of bloody pogroms forced them into exile.

The publisher, Other Press provided a reader’s guide asking questions that helps to compare and contrast the protagonist’s experiences with our own in the 21st century. This makes the similarities of her underlying moral dilemmas with ours more explicit. On the same page we find an exciting interview with the author in which she shares the history of the book, how her grandmother’s notebooks were found, how they relate to family history and how they were turned into the novel. The interview itself is a fascinating read for those who are interested in personal oral history.