Non-standard layout of “Room of Jewish Things” 0

Agnė Cesiulienė
www.kamane.lt, 2014-11-27

In brief: The book “Room of Jewish Things” (Žydiškų daiktų kambarys) of Audronė Urbonaitė presented in the Book Fair this year received much attention. It is the third novel of the writer. The first was written on the basis of personal experiences while the writer fought with cancer, the second novel was also based on personal experience of having a yellow-skinned granddaughter. This time the story was borrowed from a friend, but feelings belong to the author herself.

The main heroine of the novel is the Jewish girl Hedva searching for the father lost in childhood and striving to return him along with all attributes associated with father: love, closeness, time spent together, ice-cream shutting the mouth, items, consolation, punishment, intimate secrets, even brothers. The girl believes she has found the father and risks her personal life – money and career in order to be closer to him. Still, the father is dipped in his own life and mystic searches. The craving full of enthusiasm turns into revenge.

The words of Audronė Urbonaitė that the book is dedicated to sentimental people linger in the head for several days. The book is really sentimental and this sentimentality irritates the author of the article throughout the book. Still, it raises the female solidarity to confront men. Audronė Urbonaitė seems very sentimental and female. Hedva is also a perplexed woman analysing her life and justifying all misfortunes by the rude behaviour of her father.

As a result, the chaotically tidy life of Hevda seems like a woman’ handbag in which she finds everything all the time. This explains everything. With this attitude the novel seems to be the mirror of female world. A rather distorted mirror due to the fact that the most important man in a woman’s life has rejected her. It could serve as a notebook “How a woman should feel her own self”.


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