Book Reviews
[Grossman] weaves the essences of private life into the tapestry of history with deliberate and delicate skill; he has created a panorama of breathtaking emotional force, a masterpiece of pacing, of dedicated storytelling, with characters whose lives are etched with extraordinary, vivid detail. While his novel has the vast sweep of pure tragedy, it is also at times playful, and utterly engrossing.... This is one of those few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.
Colm Toibin - New York Times Book Review
Israeli novelist Grossman returns with an epic yet intimate story of an Israeli family and the shadow of war that haunts it. A love triangle between Ora, Avram, and Ilan ends when Avram returns to war, and Ora settles down with Ilan to raise two sons. But when her youngest is called to duty, Ora flees for Galilee, dragging with her Avram, who, deeply scared by his experience as a POW during the Yom Kippur War, has refused contact with her for years. Their shared history poignantly reveals the way conflict, war, and the loss of humanity have traumatized generations of people living in this region. Grossman, whose own soldier son was killed during the writing of this novel, connects a wide-reaching canvas of battles and bombings to the intimate realities of the relationships among family and friends. Although the atmosphere of paranoia and the flood of details can overwhelm, they also connect the reader to the characters so hypnotically that this nearly 600-page literary novel reads like a thriller.
Publishers Weekly
Ora, who has eagerly awaited her son Ofer's release from the Israeli army, is devastated when he voluntarily extends his service; she has a premonition that he will not return alive. To escape what she feels is the inevitable official notification of his death, she decides to undertake a journey planned for the two of them, an adventurous hike in Galilee, a remote mountainous region in northern Israel, telling no one how to contact her. She enlists the company of an old friend and lover, Avram, himself an open war wound, still suffering the ill effects of captivity in a prisoner-of-war camp 20 years earlier. Convinced that talking about Ofer will keep him alive, Ora fills Avram in on her life since Avram's captivity, detailing her relationship with her now-estranged husband, Ilan, the third person in their once three musketeer-like friendship, as well as her childhood and her experience as a mother. Verdict: Glimmers of humanity, life, and hope counterbalance the sense of despair, foreboding, and sadness that permeate this detailed and beautiful chronicle of Ora's, Ofer's, and Avram's lives. A final heartbreaking note from the author makes the story all the more poignant. Highly recommended. —Sarah Conrad Weisman, Corning Community Coll., NY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] powerful meditation on war, friendship, and family. Instead of celebrating her son Ofer’s discharge from the Israeli Army, Ora finds her life turned upside down and inside out when he reenlists and is sent back to the front for a major offensive. ... [T]he toll exacted by living in a land and among a people constantly at war is excruciatingly evident. —Margaret Flanagan
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