Named after the condition of being overly distressed by the sound of other people eating — an affliction shared by the book’s fifteen-year-old protagonist and her mother—Misophonia is a debut novel by German-American author Dana Vowinckel, translated into English by Adrian Nathan West.
Raised in Berlin by her father Avi, an Israeli cantor for a German synagogue, after being abandoned there as a toddler by her American mother, Marsha, Rita is a resentful and sullen teen. At the start of the novel, she is unhappily spending the summer in Chicago with her loving American grandparents, with whom she feels mainly impatience and disgust (especially at mealtimes).
Rita’s grandparents and father decide that she will spend a couple of weeks getting to know her mother, who is now a visiting professor of linguistics in Jerusalem. Rita is sent off to Israel, once again bitter and angry about her own lack of agency, and harboring deep resentments toward her long-absent mother. The reunion between the rebellious Rita and the distant, self-centered Marsha goes about as well as can be expected, especially after Rita begins a flirtation with a Lior, an Israeli boy she meets on the plane.
Throughout the novel, both father and daughter are outside of their normal realms of existence. As Rita is muddling through her trip with Marsha, Avi is at loose ends in Berlin, feeling lonely and bereft, anxious about the daughter who has been the sole focus of his life for fifteen years. Avi has long struggled to open himself up to the possibility of a romantic relationship, but during Rita’s absence, he responds to overtures from Hannah, the daughter of a former member of his congregation whose funeral he has just officiated. The novel alternates between the father’s and daughter’s stories, creating parallels between Rita’s awkward, desperate groping with Lior and Avi’s clumsy attempts with Hannah.
Rita can be somewhat inscrutable, even to herself. Vowinckel does not soften the edges of her adolescent protagonist, which makes her a believable if sometimes unlikeable character. After all, she has grown up between worlds, confused about where she belongs. And as Hebrew-speaking Jews in Germany, she and her father live under the shadow of the Holocaust despite not having been directly affected by it.
Though Marsha has been a neglectful parent, there are no heroes or villains in this book, and there is more to the family story than there appears to be at first. Misophonia is a coming-of-age novel that sensitively renders complex family dynamics in an interesting cultural context.
Lauren Gilbert is the Director of the Municipal Library of New York City. She was formerly the Director of Public Services at the Center for Jewish History.
