Sometimes you find a book, or a book finds you, and you just want to tell everyone about it. You want to grab the pom-poms you never owned and create a cheer for this book. Then you want to place the book into the hands of readers everywhere. 

That’s how I feel about The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer.

The Matzah Ball is a holiday romance with a twist. It’s a Hanukkah romance, and our main character, Rachel, lives with a chronic illness. Right away I was intrigued, and the book did not disappoint. (Additionally, the author is a Jewish woman living with a chronic illness — myalgic encephalomyelitis.)

I loved getting a glimpse into some of the Jewish traditions I’m less familiar with. I loved seeing Rachel and all the messiness that comes with a chronic illness depicted on the page. And, I loved that this book gave Rachel, and by extension – me as the reader, the happy ending I was hoping for. 

I read a library copy which I tagged with many sticky notes, which means I now need to buy my own copy at my next bookstore visit. 

This week, I’m excited to share just a few of the passages that stood out to me:

“Turning beneath the covers, she blinked and took a careful accounting of how she was feeling. Would it be a good day or a bad day? She could never be certain.
Some mornings she woke up feeling well, only to find herself completely depleted two hours later. Sometimes it was the opposite. She would crash for days at a time, with no ability to do even the most menial tasks. Her disease was constant but fluid. It peaked and ebbed with only one discernible pattern. Everything she did, everything, from writing two pages to carrying the groceries one block to her apartment, came with a kickback.
It was her normal.”

“There was no way to know how long these crashes would last. It could be hours, days, weeks…or even years. The only way to avoid the flare-ups was through a very unscientific method of pacing oneself and rest.
The problem was, of course, that Rachel was awful at pacing herself or resting.
On good days, she pushed even harder. On bad days, she still pushed…usually making herself way worse in the process.”

“She wasn’t ‘out’ about her disease. She wasn’t out about …anything. Sitting in a wheelchair meant accepting you were disabled and dealing with awkward stares from healthy people.
Most of all, and because she had a disease with a name like chronic fatigue syndrome, there was always a fear tucked away inside of her that someone would look at her and say she was doing this for attention. That she really wasn’t that sick. And so, though a wheelchair would certainly make her more mobile and give her a higher quality of life, she often chose to stay home.”