Janet Hadda, an American psychologist and literary critic, deals-for the first time-with a peculiar subject, and does it in a peculiar way. She describes the role of suicide in Yiddish literature, its social implications and psychoanalytic reflections. The author first analyses thirteen short novels, most of them dating back to the period between the two World Wars, the Golden Age of Yiddish literature. Her study then focuses on three more recent works: Di agune [The deserted wife], by Chaim Grade, and Der kunstmakher fun Lublin [The magician of Lublin] and Sonim, di geshikhte fun a libe [Enemies: A love story], by Isaac Bashevis Singer. This last novel provides a clue to the entire essay, justifying, as it does, suicide as an answer to an unbearable existential condition.

Hadda's book rests on two theses, both stated in the introduction. The first, implicit in the title, begins with a sociological assumption:

This type of suicide, which occurs in the ‘fictional works studied’ (but which appears from the statistics not to be a phenomenon of real life), results from the existential inability of the characters to respond to the basic call of Jewish ethics, which is to create a family, to procreate, and to live in a comfortable and warm environment.

Hadda's major aim is to prove, against current interpretations, how the authors she analyses ‘accept and forgive’ suicide, which is ‘ostensibly considered taboo and unpardonable’ (p. 12). At the same time these authors see in it a negative response to marriage and family, which are always perceived as positive and constructive aspects of life. The other thesis applies psychoanalytical methodology to literary criticism in an attempt to provide a new interpretation. The author in fact devotes some very interesting paragraphs to this approach.