Ask a writer what her/his book is about, and odds are good you’ll be treated to a tour of the plot, and not in 25 words or less. Stephen King knows better. As he wisely notes in ON WRITING: A Memoir of the Craft, “A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot. The most interesting situations can usually be described as a What-if situation.”

For example: What if an 18-year-old Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who is preparing to be married has a problem? She’s addicted to porn.

"Wasn’t this book once a comedy, with the laughs dependent on the reader’s sense of superiority? About halfway through, there’s a shift, and suddenly a book that once was merely smart...becomes a spiritual page-turner."

Interesting situation, don’t you think? Interesting especially because we’re considering a female. Decades ago, when I was reporting a story on New York sex clubs for Playboy, the proprietor of one club showed me a special door that provided Hasidic rebbes a discreet exit when their congregants showed up to be serviced. But women exploring their sexuality, much less consuming porn? There’s no subject more traife.

Raizl’s fall from grace begins when she takes a bite of the Apple computer. Other unmarried girls are denied the internet, but her grandfather got hurt and is now allowed to work at home. Because she’s studying accounting at Cohen College and has a part-time job, she too has a MacBook. And something just as important: her grandfather’s password. In every other way, she’s as tech-sheltered as other unmarried Hasid women --- she’s allowed an internet-free “kosher flip phone,” with blocked cameras and no messaging.

But the laptop! Late at night, in her bedroom, she’s taking a crash course in porn. Felicia Berliner uses Yiddish to make the early stage of Raizl’s addiction funny: The penis is a shvantz. Usually it goes where it should, but sometimes the woman has to point to her shmundie or the man will shtuop tuches. Clever of the novelist --- the Yiddish is strange and amusing for us.

For Raizl, nothing about her late-night sessions is amusing. As she confesses to her doctor in the first paragraphs of the book, 1) she wants to be married, 2) she can’t stop watching porn, and 3) she doesn’t know if she can follow her doctor’s directive and describe what she sees. “So this therapy,” she thinks, “is a porn of the self.”

The thing about sex is that, if you’re obsessed, you see it everywhere. On the subway, Raizl sees a woman holding a pole: “Her grip on the metal pole is suggestive. In a minute she will twist a knee around the slim silver rod. Perhaps she will unbutton the businesslike blouse visible at her neck where she has unzipped her down jacket, the heat in the train an invitation to further heat, to a physical encounter with a seeming stranger.”

And worse, sex appears just where it shouldn’t, in a crucial pre-interview with a prospective husband:

She wants to touch him, She turns suddenly away from the shop window so that the tips of her hair swing past his coat, and her skirt brushes his pants. She leans her back against the glass, her shoulder blades drawn together. If she were in a porn video, naked, her bare breasts would be thrust toward David’s face.

Even with her clothing on, this is too much for him. David steps to the side, his shoulders hunching to his ears. The matchmaker calls the next day to say there will be no second meeting.

Wasn’t this book once a comedy, with the laughs dependent on the reader’s sense of superiority? About halfway through, there’s a shift, and suddenly a book that once was merely smart --- bacon, “fruit of the swine” --- becomes a spiritual page-turner. What a conflict she has to resolve! On one side, her tentative understanding of her sexuality. On the other, the traditional expectations of her loving family. It would be easier if, as in Deborah Feldman’s UNORTHODOX: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, she wanted out. She doesn’t. And that’s what makes SHMUTZ memorable and important. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle, click here.]

Wait! That book cover! Yes, it’s a Hamantaschen, well known to Jews who love pastry as a sweet triangle-shaped cookie with a center filled with poppyseed or fruit fillings, usually enjoyed on Purim. Now look again, and look at those white lines. Can it be? Who’s thinking about sex now?