Some People
In a spoken excerpt from her new memoir, Rachel Shukert recounts the final days of a European romance
Fresh out of college, Rachel Shukert, who majored in acting, landed a job with a theater company bound for Central Europe. In her new memoir, Everything Is Going to Be Great, she recounts the pleasures and humiliations of her time abroad, unabashedly exposing her own prejudices and the prejudices of others. For this week’s Vox Tablet, she reads an excerpt that chronicles the denouement of an ill-fated romance. The man in question is Berthold—Viennese, twice her age, and both overprotective and dismissive when it comes to Shukert’s self-identification as a Jew. (“No, no,” he assures her, “you are beautiful.”) Their differences come to a head during a wander through Vienna’s best-known flea market, which contains some chilling artifacts from the city’s past.
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