Book highlights domestic violence in Orthodox Jewish community
ORANGE GROVE - An Orange Grove author Marilyn Cohen de Villiers launched her novel entitled Beautiful Family which has similar scenarios as the Pistorius case.
AS THE nation is still wondering what really happened the night Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, an Orange Grove author Marilyn Cohen-De Villiers launched her novel entitled Beautiful Family which has similar scenarios as the Pistorius case.
Cohen-De Villiers was talking about her book at Schaffler’s Under The Trees Garden Cafe in Lyndhurst. She emphasised that it is a fictional work about the problem of abuse in Jewish families which is normally kept under wraps. She however stressed that she was not attacking the Jewish community, but highlighting that there are also abusive partners in the community from which she hails.
She said, “Normally we think abuse happens in poor townships not in a wealthy, religious Jewish family.”
The book is set in the north eastern Johannesburg suburbs and mentions areas such as Louis Botha Avenue and Sandringham. It is about the mysterious death of a young woman who was married to a wealthy businessman and prominent politician.
Cohen-De Villiers said, “The book is about how she died and what happened to the family before she died. We don’t know whether it was murder, suicide or [if she] died of natural causes as there were no signs of a break-in or any physical evidence. As a reader you later realise that there was abuse in the family which is not expected in the Jewish community.”
She added that it took her six months to draft the book, and a year to get it into shape and published. The former journalist, with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Honours in English from Rhodes University, said the idea of Beautiful Family had its roots from when they visited Tel Aviv and they saw a prostitute on the roadside and her father remarked to her surprise that ‘Jewish women don’t do that’.
Cohen-De Villiers said years later her husband was told by the Sandringham Police Station commander that a particular problem in their precinct was domestic violence in Orthodox Jewish families.
Cohen-De Villiers has been married for 31 years to retired Citizen news editor, Poen de Villiers. After the birth of their two daughters, she ‘crossed over’ into public relations.
