Cammy Sitting Shiva
By Cary Gitter (Alcove Press)

Shiva is a sacred Jewish ritual meant to ease the suffering of those left behind, as family and friends gather for seven days to remember the dead and support the living. It is a solemn custom, especially for those who adhere devoutly to tradition. But some within the faith grieve in their own way. Cammy Adler is one of those people.

In Cary Gitter’s debut novel, Cammy Sitting Shiva, readers meet the title character while she is “adrift at a party the night her dad died.” The directionless 30-year-old lives in a basement apartment in Queens, N.Y., and just about makes a living as a freelance copywriter.

She is certainly ill-equipped to return to her childhood home in the small town of River Hill in Bergen County, N.J., to console her mother, Beth, after her beloved father, Cy, dies of pneumonia following a minor surgical procedure.

Despite the book’s title, much of Cammy Sitting Shiva is about Cammy avoiding the acts and rituals of it. After placating difficult family members and enduring the incessant presence of the family rabbi, Cammy spends time with Fran, one of her childhood friends. The two smoke weed, get drunk and talk about the dreams they hope to make realities. Cammy also ventures outside the home, where she hooks up with a bartender who was also her former crush, Nick Ramos, and meets her high school English teacher, Dr. Strum, to reminisce about old times.

The book is less about the prescribed hallmarks of shiva—the covering of mirrors or sitting on low stools—than about shiva as a process of grieving, which in Cammy’s case is both unorthodox and individualistic.

Cammy sees herself as a modern woman, an atheist who is independent of time-honored traditions and free of what she thinks of as Jewish indoctrination. Yet her faith stalks her in the form of Rabbi Weiner, who bestows unwanted pearls of religious wisdom. Judaism is a nebulous entity throughout Cammy Sitting Shiva but has strategic influence, especially as it pertains to the overwhelming grieving process.

At times, Gitter’s work resembles a schmaltzy Hallmark movie or, with its romantic subplot, a sappy theatrical rom-com. But what makes Cammy Sitting Shiva charmingly distinct is Cammy’s unabashed acknowledgment of these moments. The novel carries a self-reflexive quality that is humorous, syrupy sweet and occasionally uncomfortable.

An example of the latter comes when Cammy accidentally finds an old photograph of her father with a woman other than her mother, a supposed family secret. In Cammy’s attempt at sleuthing, she solves the mystery by speaking to her Aunt Miriam, which ends up becoming one in a series of minor detours. These moments serve as distractions for Cammy, who not only lost her father but also the parent who knows her best: “Cy had been the fun one, the friend, the partner in crime. Just about every weekend when she was young, he’d taken her on ‘adventures’ as he called them, into the city—to movies, shows, museums, Yankees games.”

Woven throughout the novel are Cammy’s reminiscences about those adventures, leaving readers to experience her joy, hurt and bereavement, and ultimately to empathize with her, even when she lashes out or chooses not to be a mensch.

Gitter’s Cammy Sitting Shiva, even with its occasional narrative dead end and periodic canned sentimentality, is a solid debut novel that speaks to the complex nature of grief and religious practice—and how some may lament without observing ritualized traditions.

Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr., is professor of composition and communication at SUNY Cobleskill and has published book reviews in multiple venues, including The Feathered Quill, Rain Taxi, ArtsFuse and On the Seawall.