Kongwang Gao Di

Crown Heights is the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn where Adam Wizman’s former wife, Valérie Berdah, settles with their daughters after separating from him. In the novel, the neighborhood is more than a destination: its religious community and daily codes frame Mila Wizman’s growing sense of constraint, while the family’s moves between France, Israel, and the United States expose the uneven meanings of safety, belonging, and home.

Setting and family relocation

After the 2012 attack on the Jewish school attended by Adam and Valérie’s daughters, the family left France for Israel, seeking protection from antisemitic violence. The move to Ra’anana proved unsuccessful for Adam: although he felt attached to the country, he could not imagine integrating there without changing himself, and he was troubled by what he perceived as the migrants’ denial of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The family returned to France, where Adam resumed teaching at a Jewish school.

After Adam’s relationship with Claire Farel led to the end of his marriage, Valérie moved with the girls to Brooklyn. A few weeks after the separation, she told Adam that they would live in Crown Heights, a Jewish neighborhood whose ultra-Orthodox milieu had become part of her life. Adam did not object. He preferred the distance, and Claire was also relieved not to have to share their home with his daughters on an alternating-week basis.

Religious life and Mila’s departure

Crown Heights shapes Mila’s experience through specific rules governing clothing, commerce, and gender. She arrives at Adam and Claire’s apartment in France with a suitcase, unable to tolerate the pressure of life in her mother’s religious community. She says her mother keeps requiring her to wear longer skirts and black stockings in every season. The neighborhood’s shops, she reports, sell only goods considered compliant with Jewish law; even toy stores divide their offerings into kitchen sets for girls and prayer kits for boys.

The conflict sharpens when Valérie tells Mila that, at eighteen, she is old enough to marry and that she may ask the community’s rabbi to introduce her to a potential husband. Mila decides to return to France. She is legally an adult and is preparing for her baccalaureate as an independent candidate; Adam tells her she can live with him. Crown Heights thus stands at the center of a generational disagreement over religious observance and personal autonomy, made concrete in the regulation of Mila’s clothes, movement, and anticipated future.

Family consequences and significance

Mila’s move back to France does not restore her earlier family life. She spends much of her time in the apartment watching American television series and old films. Claire finds her constant presence difficult and senses an animosity between them, whether real or imagined; she tolerates Mila without trying to create an affectionate bond. The consequences of the move therefore extend beyond a change of address: the family’s migration and separation rearrange intimacy, leaving Mila with her father while her mother and younger sister remain in Brooklyn.

The later account of Mila’s life confirms the lasting distance. Valérie has rebuilt her life in Brooklyn with a man from an Orthodox Jewish milieu, and they have a young son; Mila’s younger sister lives with them. Mila has little contact with her mother and feels guilty because Valérie tells her that if she had stayed in the United States, the later events in France would not have happened. Crown Heights is consequently associated both with Valérie’s new religious and family life and with Mila’s estrangement from her mother. The neighborhood’s role is not to explain the family’s conflict by itself, but to give that conflict a lived setting in which religious belonging, parental authority, and a daughter’s desire to choose her own life collide.