What a Shame: 'Intelligent, moving and darkly comic' The Sunday Times

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For all of us second-generation migrants who are writing from the fraught perspective of what we owe to our parents, this short story is shattering. The son of Jewish immigrants to the US, Schwartz perfectly captures the burden of shame the immigrant’s child feels of never being able to compensate for their parents’ exile and sacrifice. I could tattoo this short story on my skin. I’m not a fan of the ‘Poor me’ autobiography genre. Mostly I find such books dull, embarrassing and often a bit manipulative. Some of them I just don’t believe and suspect are padded for sympathy. I’m not, therefore, the sort of person who reads this sort of book. What I find particularly interesting is trying to understand what it’s like to be caught between two cultures – the culture of your parents and the countries they’ve left behind and the culture of your birth country where they’ve settled. Perhaps it’s about a sense of belonging and fitting in that most people crave regardless of where they’ve come from.

Jas tries to rekindle her relationship with her family after her daughter's birth but things were never the same again. Her failed relationships, marriages and bad decisions were what made her the strong woman that she is now. When her sister Robina commits suicide, she promises to help women who are pushed in to forced marriages. Her organization Karma Nirvana has been assisting thousands of women ever since. Jas's story is not one of victimization but is of survival. I could never understand her mother's cold behaviour, about the fact that parents can be so ruthless in the name of religion and honour.

Concerned that she isn't moving on, Mathilda's friends push her towards a series of increasingly unorthodox remedies. I loved her volunteer work, her learning at every stage. I am happy she met the women she met. I am grateful for their open mindedness, their empathy and non judgement. She’s still reeling from the blow of a gut-punch break up and grieving the death of a loved one. But that’s not it.

LeBlanc VR. The relationship between emotions and learning in simulation-based education. Simulation in Healthcare. 2019;14(3):137-139. doi:10.1097/SIH.0000000000000379 This book is one of the most honest depictions of grief i’ve ever read - it took me quite a while to get through as I had to keep stopping to absorb what i’d just read. Tender, unflinching and blisteringly funny, What a Shame glitters with rage and heartbreak, perfect for fans of Emma Jane Unsworth, Dolly Alderton and Holly Bourne.Affecting, clever and blisteringly humorous... a riveting read about heartbreak, female shame and self-acceptance' - Sarra Manning, Red Magazine What a Shame’ is a perfect balance of genuine heart and awkward humour. If you enjoyed ‘Fleabag’ and writers like Caitlin Moran and Dawn O’ Porter I think you’ll love this debut. We don’t know anything about the writer or writers of the Book of Job more than 2,500 years ago. Arguably, it is the first great work of existentialism. What is the meaning of our being on this Earth? Why do we suffer? How do we bear the shame of being unloved? One doesn’t have to be religious to identify with and be humbled by Job’s story. It is the antithesis of “new age”. Acceptance is never enough. There cannot be faith without doubt. There cannot be merit without sacrifice.

Intelligent, moving and darkly comic . . . taking us deftly from serious explorations of trauma and consent to riotously funny scenes of modern life’ I really wanted to love this book but ultimately... It's okay? There are a lot of books like this - semi-functional sad girl protagonist with some deep seated trauma and a group of good quirky friends - which is a genre I generally vibe with. But this one...it just fell flat. I think possibly trying to do too many things at once, and the shifts in tone and voice and up pretty unsatisfying. But it's not bad! It's possible I might have got more out of it if I hadn't read other versions of This Book that I liked more or felt a greater emotional link to. So I don't want to be too critical, hence the 3 stars.The two aspects of shame I have experienced, the one negative and exiling, the other positive and humbling, are core to the human experience. Shame tears us apart; and shame allows for compassion and contrition. Paul understood this. As do the following writers. Westermann S, Rief W, Euteneuer F, Kohlman S. Social exclusion and shame in obesity. Eat Behav. 2015;17:74-6. doi:10.1016/j.eatbeh.2015.01.001 Jasvinder grew up in Derby in a traditional Sikh family with several of her siblings. But it was her brother who always scored special treatment from her parents. Living in a guarded community, Jas wasn't even allowed to cut her hair or put on makeup for it was considered too frivolous. Girls were liabilities, someone who were arranged to be married off at just 15. After witnessing abusive marriages around her including that of her sisters', Jas decides to run away when she's presented with a man much older than her who was to be her husband. Her parents'expected rejection of her Punjabi boyfriend because he belonged to a lower status was the final push that freed Jas. The two struggle to survive outside the community and for many years, she is cut off from the family.

Dazzling . . . one of those novels where you think you're exploring someone else's pain, only to realise you're exploring your own' I was an adolescent when I first came across the letters of St Paul. Though I had been raised Greek Orthodox, at 13 I had joined an evangelical church in the hope that God would banish my shame. The shame of being different. The shame of hurting my immigrant parents’ honour. The shame of being gay. At that age, all I could hear from Paul was his admonishment in his first letter to the Corinthians that my homosexuality would banish me for ever from God’s love and grace. I battled with that for over two years before finally abandoning my faith. It was a relief to declare myself atheist, and a relief to begin the slow, difficult process of extricating myself from shame.Intelligent, moving and darkly comic . . . taking us deftly from serious explorations of trauma and consent to riotously funny scenes of modern life'