“The community focused on in Lily Brett’s What God Wants takes only brief glances at the single fact that underlies its entire existence – the Holocaust. Brett’s extraordinary achievement is to suggest obliquely the horror of that event while fully presenting the humor and passion of her characters’ lives.”
Marilyn French

What God Wants was first published in Australia, where it received the equivalent of the PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction, the most prestigious honor that nation bestows on a new literary voice.

Review: Publishers Weekly
“Although the middle-aged characters in this distinctive collection of 16 interconnected stories are a diverse lot, they are bound together by a shared past: all are the children of Holocaust survivors …. The women in these tales shine with originality and strength; the men for the most part exist in the background, betraying or supporting their wives.

Chic, sensual Ruthie Brot is forced into some surprising decisions because of her affair with a friend's husband. Susan Silverman's husband ``is shtooping a shikse'' as she announces in Hot Ochre paint on the outside of her house. Ella Tennenbaum, a prominent journalist brooding over three failed marriages, seeks a new life in Israel. Dora Lipshitz, absorbed in being the perfect wife, decides not to pry into her husband's philandering. Rosa Cohen, after years of analysis, is still profoundly neurotic.

Each has her own individual problems but they share subtle self-imposed barriers: each stifles her anger, distrusts the consequences of happiness and feels an overwhelming need to keep the family together. These wryly comic yet deeply moving stories explore layers of guilt and fear, and above all the need for belonging--to the family, to the community and to the faith.”