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For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

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A work of stunning authority and imagination - a book that is as wondrous and joyful as it is wrenchingly sad, and that heralds the arrival of a profoundly gifted new storyteller.

Already sold in eight countries around the world, these nine energized, irreverent stories from Nathan Englander introduce an astonishing new talent.

In Englander's amazingly taut and ambitious "The Twenty-seventh Man," a clerical error lands earnest, unpublished Pinchas Pelovits in prison with twenty-six writers slated for execution at Stalin's command, and in the grip of torture Pinchas composes a mini-masterpiece, which he recites in one glorious moment before author and audience are simultaneously annihilated. In "The Gilgul of Park Avenue," a Protestant has a religious awakening in the back of a New York taxi. In the collection's hilarious title story, a Hasidic man incensed by his wife's interminable menstrual cycle gets a dispensation from his rabbi to see a prostitute.

The stories in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges are powerfully inventive and often haunting, steeped in the weight of Jewish history and in the customs of Orthodox life. But it is in the largeness of their spirit-- a spirit that finds in doubt a doorway to faith, that sees in despair a chance for the heart to deepen--and in the wisdom that so prodigiously transcends the author's twenty-eight years, that these stories are truly remarkable. Nathan Englander envisions a group of Polish Jews herded toward a train bound for Auschwitz and in a deft imaginative twist turns them into acrobats tumbling out of harm's way; he takes an elderly wigmaker and makes her, for a single moment, beautiful. Again and again, Englander does what feels impossible: he finds, wherever he looks, a province beyond death's dominion.

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is a work of stunning authority and imagination--a book that is as wondrous and joyful as it is wrenchingly sad, and that heralds the arrival of a profoundly gifted new storyteller.

205 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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About the author

Nathan Englander

56 books388 followers
Nathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999. The volume won widespread critical acclaim, earning Englander the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kauffman Prize, and established him as an important writer of fiction.

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5 stars
903 (29%)
4 stars
1,297 (42%)
3 stars
661 (21%)
2 stars
175 (5%)
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34 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 307 reviews
Profile Image for Stef Smulders.
Author 33 books118 followers
January 28, 2018
A mixed bag. The first two stories are full of black absurd humor. The other stories often start out interesting but then lose pace. The best one for me was Reunion.
Profile Image for Brian.
Author 1 book1,087 followers
July 22, 2016
A solid inaugural book of short stories, all pieces written with Jewish orthodoxy as the centerpiece. I really like how Englander approached this subject matter from so many different angles; using horror and humor to bring home a point. The author isn't just taking the piss on his heritage, he's pointing his quill at all of humanity. "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" was a standout in the collection; the writing here was especially crisp and the four very distinct charcters in the story have their own voices portrayed beautifully.
Profile Image for flaminia.
385 reviews119 followers
April 30, 2018
che bella l'ebreitudine come te la racconta englander, quasi quasi mi viene voglia di convertirmi, mettermi una sheitel e andare a finire i miei giorni a mea shearim.
Profile Image for Jan Rice.
547 reviews491 followers
October 8, 2013
Meeting a new author via short stories isn't ideal for me. So on reading the first two in this collection I thought I was in for a slog. First, a group martyred by Stalin, and second, one martyred by Nazis. Terrible--but I didn't know them well enough to feel it in my bones. On the other hand maybe I hadn't warmed sufficiently to the author to let him make me feel. The next story is about this charming but shallow manic-depressive screw-up who's always complaining it isn't his fault: things are looking up with that story, but I thought it still ended with a thud. Next comes a sex-starved, neglected, middle-aged, and very Orthodox mother of six. Shorn at marriage, her life force seemingly went the way of the hair and she's obsessed with getting it back. Luckily, so it would seem, she's the wig maker and an artist at it.... The author is starting to show me he can mine the particular so deeply he hits the universal. My favorite: the story about the man who out of the blue has a conversion experience one day in the back seat of a cab. It's so funny and poignant it hurts (and in that regard I think he outdoes Howard Jacobson's wannabe Jew Julian Treslove from The Finkler Question). The next story is named "Reb Kringle"--obvious, or it will be before you can get very far over the mountain and through the woods. Maybe the subject of that one is already a cultural archetype. Or could I have read it somewhere else? ...Next, a really, really sad one: chained wife, trapped in Jewish marriage because her husband won't give her her religious writ of divorce although he's been gone for years, now driven to extreme measures by this travesty--until you see, with a shock of recognition, that she would be just as out-maneuvered and paralyzed, whatever the particular policies and procedures. Ouch. ...The title story perhaps is another cultural archetype, but the protagonist is a real character in his own right. You want to tell him to get himself to the doctor and let go of that guilt!

The book ends with a possibly autobiographical story of a young American Jew in Jerusalem during a second-intifada act of terror. Anyway, the dates are right. It's more modern and "realistic" than the other stories.

Terror messes with your head, even if you know you're still more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than by a terrorist bomb. The cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book on how such deviations from rationality work, talked about how he knew the statistics but couldn't bring himself to ride a bus during the intifada and could hardly stand to pull up alongside one at a traffic light.

I had read that last story the previous night and had it on my mind when I saw the story of the latest Iraq bomb blast. I've read that, throughout history, war has been the norm, with peace a rare interlude existing only at specific times or in unusual circumstances. If we have it, though, we get used to it and hardly appreciate it.

Anyway, in this book you'll meet up with a collection of bizarre characters who are shockingly real and march to the beat of their idiosyncrasies. For me the stories built in power, up to my favorite, in the middle of the book, and from there to the end was easy and quick because I liked it.

Most of the stories apart from the first two and the last are about being stuck in relationships. And the author paints them as very, very sticky.

My beef with contemporary short stories as I've encountered them is their bleakness. I prefer a momentary ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloom; not necessarily a "happy ending," but just the hint of a promise that peace and happiness exist; that, in deepest winter, spring will come again. Thus my choice of favorite.
Profile Image for Lisa (NY).
1,678 reviews745 followers
January 27, 2018
3.5 stars - A well written selection of dark and sometimes funny stories mostly revolving around Orthodox Jewish culture. Englander has created an imaginative and fascinating collection of characters. Yet they remained "characters" - and did not come alive for me. I really liked Englander's Ministry of Special Cases and will certainly read more of his work.
Profile Image for Stuart.
Author 5 books168 followers
August 27, 2010
The stories here aren't character driven as much as they are idea driven. Some of the ideas are brilliant. The setting is always deeply Jewish, but I think those who don't have an understanding of Orthodox Jewish culture can still strongly identify with the lives of the people portrayed. Englander owes a deep debt to Bernard Malamud in a good way. He may well be his worthy successor.

These stories often begin with a bang. Englander doesn't waste time on setting. Some of these stories had me smiling with admiration right from the first paragraph. For example, who would possibly think of taking the stories and characters of Chelm folklore and updating them to the Holocaust where, in some strange way, the Chelmites manage to survive because of their foolishness? That's just stupendous and wonderful.

The execution of these stories is very good with unique details added to amuse and keep reader interest. Englander is not afraid to use shtick even in the most serious of settings. In this work, his voice isn't quite mature, and the narratives often wobble a bit. The language isn't quite as sharp as it could be. But Englander is clearly a talent even in this first work of fiction. His subsequent novel, The Minister of Special Cases, showed that he was capable of building on the talents developed here. Englander is one of my favorite young novelists writing today.
Profile Image for John Jeffire.
Author 9 books17 followers
July 18, 2012
This guy's first book? Damn, I'm jealous. If you only read two of these stories, I recommend "The Twenty-seventh Man" and "The Tumblers." These stories are remarkable for their historical sense of authenticity. I believe in the characters Bretzky and Zunser and Korinsky, and I am fully in emotional harmony with the idiot savant Pelovitz. Englander said of this story that the rounding up of 26 Yiddish authors did occur and he has take the liberty to bring this tale to life and add in Pelovitz to boot. There is an aura of historical realness to the story that made me look up the authors to see if they in fact did exist--that's how convincing Englander is. Ultmately, I marvel at an author so young who can write so old. The book is an artifact of a wise, weathered soul that flowed through a young man's pen.
Profile Image for Paul Cockeram.
Author 0 books7 followers
May 15, 2014
Nathan Englander publishes only a couple of story collections per decade. The fact that he is an international darling of Jewish literature suggests that his work makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. And there is indeed a richness and complexity to these stories that bears out the time and labor Englander apparently put into them. Even the order of the pieces throughout the collection suggests careful deliberation, with significant themes and motifs carrying through from one story to the next. The first pair of tales—“The Twenty-Seventh Man” and “The Tumblers”—share a fabulist sensibility: they both investigate the suffering of Jews under oppressive state governments, chronicling their doomed attempts to survive in language that is at once sweet and hopeful and graphically violent.

An account of the aftermath of terrorism, “In This Way We are Wise,” ends the collection. It is the most fragmented story. It is also digressive, distracted, difficult to follow—a persuasive mimic of the mind recovering from tragedy. Or steeling itself for the beginning of recovery. It leaves the images of attack lingering in readers’ minds, sprinkled throughout the narrative of an otherwise normal day in the life of an American expatriate in Jerusalem. He goes to his usual café, orders his usual coffee, goes home to watch the news and then make love with his girlfriend. Then it’s back to the café, all the while wondering what responsibilities he bears to the dead, or more alarmingly, to the living.

“For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” reads like a retelling of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” its cruel irony focused on a Hasidic Jew whose wife ignores him while his desire for her swells hour by hour. When he seeks help from his rabbi, the solution he is given turns out to solve all of his love life’s problems with the same act that threatens to destroy his love life for good.

“The Last One Way” features another character trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, this time a woman in her fifties trying for the past eighteen years to divorce her abusive husband, who will not give her the permission to sever their marriage that their religion requires. She begs. She turns to kabbala and numerology, makes promises, eventually turns to hired thugs. The story renders an elegant, sympathetic account of her struggle. I liked this one a lot—it was more grounded than some of the stories in this collection’s flashier, more gimmicky middle.

In particular, the middle contains two stories—“Reb Kringle,” about a Jewish man playing Santa Clause at the local department store, and “The Gilgul of Park Avenue,” about a wealthy Manhattanite who suddenly realizes in the back of a taxi cab that he is Jewish—stories that sparkle with wit even as they stretch plausibility. They feel like departures from two earlier pieces in the collection—“Reunion” and “The Wig”—both of which investigate desperate psyches on the verge of mental breakdown, trying to fulfill their deepest desire, for which they and the ones close to them endure the cost. In these stories, Englander portrays the pain we suffer at the hands of those close to us, the pain we cause by accident because we cannot help ourselves or erase what our hearts want.

This is a collection of sophisticated, complex stories that reward the study and analysis. Those interested in Jewish culture should especially make a point of picking up this book, but the themes--as with all good literature--are virtually universal.
Profile Image for Reese.
163 reviews64 followers
April 21, 2015
Revised: 4/21/2015

Readers of Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges may find that some/most of the stories are linked by the role that luck plays in our lives and by our amazing uses of creative powers to handle what feels "unbearable" and by the lengths to which we may go to stop being or feeling victimized. However, mortification (whether hidden or in plain view) is, I maintain, what makes all of the stories in the collection a gathering of distant cousins, if not close relatives. Mortification:(1)"humiliation in feeling, as by some wound in pride";(2)"Pathol. the death of one part of the body while the rest is alive." Yep, threaded through the eye of the needle that sews the stories together is mortification.

Though "related" stories, Englander's book, not unlike most collections, contains both works that stick to you and works that leave you before you've seen the last page. "The Twenty-seventh Man," "The Wig," and "The Tumblers" have Krazy Glue on them -- in the plots and in the prose. Englander's writing is, at times, exquisite; his words, haunting: "But there were no snipers, as there are for hands that reach out of the ghettos; no dogs, as for hands that reach out from the cracks in boxcar floors; no angels waiting, as they always do, for hands that reach out from chimneys into ash-clouded skies"("The Tumblers" 55). I hope you don't have to be Jewish to feel the Krazy Glue.
Profile Image for Diane S ☔.
4,825 reviews14.3k followers
July 14, 2013
There is no question that this author can write. Maybe I was a bit handicapped because I know and understand even less about the orthodox Jews. The first two stories were a bit dark but humorous at the same time, as if the author knows you can only have so much darkness before light. The rest of the books and the stories were a little easier, I particularly liked the story, "The Wig".
51 reviews1 follower
September 13, 2007
OK I'll say it: you've GOT to read this. But let me qualify that by mentioning that you might not get it if you're not (sigh) Jewish. I think it was Will Smith who said, "Take it from me, gentiles just don't understand." In spite of the Semitic tag, Nathan Englander is as good a young writer as any I can think of. I hope his debut novel which just came out is as good as this. Tremendous short fiction.
Profile Image for Sarah.
Author 9 books190 followers
November 6, 2007
This collection of short stories gives a peek into the world of the Hasadim, a group that never fails to fascinate me. It is for the most part arranged chronologically, from the Stalinist purges of Yiddish authors to what seems to be an autobiographical account of surviving a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Beautifully written and sometimes really devastating.
1,304 reviews42 followers
May 30, 2014
Another splendid collection of Short stories, reading these is like taking a heavenly bath in great writing.
Profile Image for Florence.
864 reviews13 followers
April 19, 2018
The story from this collection that stands out is The Tumblers. How a writer can zip back and forth from imminent cataclysm to absurd farce is nothing short of amazing. Who knew that the chasm between Jews who brush off religious rituals and those who live by them could be so entertaining? Nathan Englander knows the Jewish people intimately; their ancient history, their tragedy, and their human foibles.
Profile Image for Ariela.
445 reviews12 followers
February 18, 2020
Really enjoyable. As with any collection, some were much stronger than others. Englander is has carved out a niche for himself as a modern Jewish storyteller and I’m here for it.
333 reviews64 followers
June 30, 2017
This book was beautiful. Must. Read. More. Englander.
Profile Image for Sheri.
1,259 reviews
February 2, 2017
Somehow I did not realize this was a collection of short stories and I wasn't really in the mood. They are not bad stories, but are all focused on Orthodox Jews (something about which I don't know a whole lot). It holds together well enough as a collection and some are better than others; I have each story noted below.

The Twenty-seventh Man
A story about 27 men in holding before execution in Stalin Russia. The focus is on the last man added to the list (the 27th) as an almost after thought. He seems to be less productive, but certainly worshipful of the other 26 more famous men. I wasn't really taken with this one; just as Pinchas gets acclaim he is shot. On the other hand, it was illustrative of the brutality of war and persecution of the Jews.

The Tumblers
This one was a bit more hopeful. The most strict orthodox Jews mistakenly board a circus train (instead of a train on its way to a camp). It left me wondering how the very efficient German guards would have allowed this to happen. The irony here is that of course they don't pull off a tumbling act (the reader does not expect that), but they are greeted as a clown troupe performing the "Jewish ballet". It is unclear from the ending if they will continue performing or be sent to the camps, but it is a bit hopeful.

Reunion
This is set in modern times with a non-confirming man who is repeatedly put into an asylum by his wife. While there, he meets a man who turns out to be his rabbi's brother. Clearly the shock value of a reunion will not appeal and once again Marty learns that conformity is NOT about impulse. I was mildly entertained with this one, but also struck by the inability of the rabbi to forgive.

The Wig
Again set in modern times, the wigmaker becomes obsessed with a gardener's hair. I was unsure about the ending. She gave him an envelope filled with (what this reader believes to be) $4000, yet at the end he is hounding her for money. I guess the point is that the hair was worth more than that, but can't the guy grow more? I was not convinced that he would continue to hound her; it would have been more believable if he started bringing around his friends to try to sell her more hair (since she paid such top dollar).

The Gilgul of Park Avenue
This was similar to Reunion in that the conflict is between the husband and wife and shrinks are consulted. Both stories deal with expectations; as spouses we have certain parameters in which we are supposed to behave. When a spouse stops following orthodox behavior (in Reunion) or starts (in Gilgul), the other spouse has the right to be upset. Gilgul is a bit more hopeful and certainly allows for individuals to be such within certain bounds. There were also a few funny moments along the way.

Reb Kringle
I think this way my favorite story. An orthodox Jew working as Santa and getting fired. Interesting to watch the intersection of need (must earn money in a job) with values (a kid shouldn't be denied Hanukkah).

The Last One Way
Again we have the power of the community upon the individual. Poor Gitta has been trying to get divorced for 18 years, but cannot move on. Unfortunately I just didn't get it. Threatening murder and beating up her ex-husband and pretending to be pregnant. It felt like a farce, but I was afraid that Englander meant it with a straight face. This was probably my least favorite of the stories.

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
This was also greatly ironically funny. The needy husband is advised to visit a prostitute in order to calm himself enough to be aloof, which will then entice his wife. It works, perfectly. But, of course the husband is not only guilty and feels badly then when his wife makes advances, he also has contracted a disease. Definitely my second favorite in the book.

In this way We are Wise
The short sections with poetic descriptions were pretty, but I didn't feel like this one belonged with the others. An American living in Isreal and coming to grips with the war zone. There was not a humorous element and it did not focus on orthodoxy. In general, I thought this was one of the weaker stories in the collection.
Profile Image for Wendell.
Author 40 books61 followers
February 5, 2010
The reviews (three pages of them inside the book itself) are not so much positive as they are rapturous -- and I just don't get it. In most of these stories, nothing happens. Lots and lots of physical description and carefully wrought details and painstaking scene-setting ... and virtually no there, there. It's Fabergé fiction, literary short stories as netsuke. I don't know why I continue to be shocked that so much of the fiction that is rewarded today (with publication, with major reviews, with a serious marketing effort on the publisher's part) is of this style, but I'm just going to keep saying that I find it disappointing reading. To be sure, some of the stories in the collection are more interesting than others, but on the whole, I'd rather be napping.
Profile Image for Alan.
Author 12 books171 followers
February 6, 2017
strong stories with Jewishness as their theme. The first one has a bunch of writers rounded up and jailed in Stalin's Russia, and in the second a group of Jews in WW2 Germany somehow board the wrong train (they are supposed to be heading off to the death camps) and are mistaken for tumblers. Humour offsets the impending horror and allows you (the reader) to breathe and think, thus underlining the grim realities to come. Others stories are more contemporary, one set in a terrorised Jerusalem where people run from suicide bombs, another In New York where a gentile suddenly realises he is Jewish at heart in a cab. All are witty, original and elegantly written, although I found some more successful than others. A terrific debut.
34 reviews1 follower
June 24, 2007
This is an incredible collection of short stories about Jews. The first one didn't just make me cry - I sobbed. All of the stories were good, several were splendid and heart-wrenching. Each one felt like a tiny novel rather than a short story.

Each story somehow related to my own history (I am the child of a father who was a concentration camp inmate and a mother who was a first generation new yorker brought up on the lower east side of Manhattan whose first language was yiddish). I'm sure that was part of the draw of these stories, but it wasn't all of it. They are wonderful.
Profile Image for Ann Doherty.
5 reviews4 followers
July 7, 2007
Some of the stories are very funny, especially the one about the middle-aged New York businessman who discovers his Jewish soul in a taxi cab. And the one about the wigmaker. Ludicrous set-ups, yet very poignant and (I found) easy to relate to and universal. The first two, about Russians being deported to concentration camps, are gut wrenching. The last one about living in Israel and surviving a bomb attack was the only one I didn't like, the style and sentiments seemed a bit contrived, even though it was the only one very clearly autobiographical. Anyhow I'm dying to read his novel now.
Profile Image for Ann.
579 reviews31 followers
September 8, 2012
This collection of beautifully written short stories surprised me. Some are quite humorous ("Reb Kringle" being my favorite of these), with a droll sensibility pervading the majority. However, three of the stories are deadly serious, with subject matter ranging from the horrors of WWII to the modern-day prevalence of terrorism in Jerusalem.I expect to be haunted by "The Tumblers" for some time to come, especially by the heart-breaking final paragraph.
Profile Image for Brett.
88 reviews4 followers
April 8, 2008
englander reads like a much older person from a much older time. the picture on the back of the book didn't correspond, for me, with the words inside it. which is, i think, what made how much i enjoyed this collection such a pleasant surprise. favorite stories: the tumblers, the wig, the gilgul of park avenue, the last one way, in this way we are wise.
Profile Image for Chava.
417 reviews
May 18, 2013
I think I need to take a break from "Jewish" reading. This book was highly praised by many reviewers. I found the stories amusing, full of irony, but mostly sad. Having read Steven Stern and Shalom Auslander, I find this to be more of the same: mocking Orthodoxy, finding humor in grave situations, and giving me a little too much information about people's sex lives.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Alyssa.
739 reviews74 followers
July 28, 2016
I'm really disappointed in this book after reading What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank which I loved. The stories in this started off good but got progressively worse until I was just reading the book to finish it without any enjoyment. It is really cool to see how far Englander's writing has come though.
Profile Image for Judy.
430 reviews112 followers
January 1, 2008
The first couple of stories are brilliant, but I got less enthusiastic as the book went on.
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