Reviews

• Israel’s finest contemporary writer

  It was sheer coincidence that during the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India, I was deeply engrossed in reading “To The End Of The Land” by David Grossman, Israel’s finest contemporary writer. Breathing a new literary life into Israel’s anguished soul, the book piercingly scrutinizes the ubiquity of death in the lives of Israelis in this age of intifadas, the existential anxiety that it spawns, and the horrendous price that Israeli macho military ideology extracts. And, the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has played a major military and political role during the last three decades in the ongoing saga of war, occupation, and political turmoil, was not lost on me. At the heart of the book is a mother’s anxiety about her son in the Army – a feeling with which most Israelis identify as there is compulsory military service of three years in Israel. In an interview David Grossman remarked that in Israel most families plan for three children so that even if one is killed in the Army, they have another two. Ora is a 49-year old mother and her younger son Ofer has just finished his compulsory military service. Adam, her elder son, has already completed his Army tenure and is currently in Bolivia with his father Ilan, Ora’s estranged husband. Ora is well aware from her experience with Adam that it is not the same person who returns from the Army. She knows “…they don’t really come back. Not like they were before. And that the boy he used to be had been lost to her forever the moment he was nationalized- lost to himself, too.” [p 68] Her motherhood wants to reclaim this boy to herself after his return from the Army. Towards that end, she has planned a hike in Galilee with him, all alone, so that the mother and son can be together and re-discover each other. However, unbeknownst to her, Ofer decides to volunteer for a new military campaign that leaves Ora utterly devastated. She is ravaged by the thought of his death and in one inspired moment of magical thinking comes to the conclusion that she can protect him from possible death by fleeing from the “notifiers” who the Army traditionally sends to the families who have suffered bereavement. She argues with herself that “…notification will never be given, because notification always takes two, Ora thinks – one to give and the one to receive - and there will be no one to receive this notification so it will not be delivered...” [p 94] Ora escapes to Galilee without informing anyone, leaving no forwarding address, and abandoning her phone so that nobody can reach her. She takes Aviram with her who is her childhood friend, past lover, and Ofer’s biological father. Ora, Ilan, and Aviram had first met during 1967 war when they were teenagers. While Ilan is handsome, self-assured, and witty, Aviram is short-statured, inventive, and hugely imaginative. She loves them both, but ends up marrying Ilan. Both of them also served in the Army. But, Aviram returns from the Army a broken man - damaged in body and spirit because of the treatment that he received as a POW. Ora and Ilan help to rehabilitate him but Aviram has lost the spark that used to keep him going. Ora sleeps with him in order to revive his will to live, and Ofer is conceived. So close are these friends that Ilan knows about Ofer but still adopts and raises him as his own son along with their first born Adam. Aviram withdraws from the world, cuts himself off from everyone, and refuses to talk to Ora about their son Ofer. He is living in the squalid margins of the society when Ora whisks him away to Galilee. During this 500 kilometer walk, Ora tells Ofer’s story to Aviram recalling every moment of his life – from the moment he was born to the first step that he took, from his feeding habits as an infant to his sweaty body odor after sports, and from his childhood dread of Arabs to his current girlfriend who has broken up with him. She believes that talking constantly about Ofer, and keeping him alive in the conversation, will protect her son from the death she is imagining. This walk, then, becomes the central pillar around which David Grossman creates the narrative structure of a mother’s personal anguish and a nation’s tragedy. Slowly, flitting backward and forward in time, a pace that he controls brilliantly, a rich portrait emerges of not only a happy family but also of three men in Ora’s life who bond in their masculinity, witticism, and a world view that is increasingly divergent from Ora’s, especially concerning that nebulous Israeli “situation” made up of roadblocks, ambushes, suicide bombers, and violent deaths. She wonders whether she has actually been able to protect her son despite all her teachings to be good because in the fog of the “situation” that they are in; there is a dichotomy between being good and being alive. While reading this book I found Ora’s character to be really majestic. Although her “flight from bad tidings” may appear to be a sign of an anxious, neurotic mother, the Ora that actually emerges is a nurturer who revives, shelters, and comforts as much the failed conscience of her son as that of a people uncomfortable with the destiny that they have inherited . Amongst many other things that are simply outstanding in this book, I will like to highlight three very important aspects that make this book a great novel. Firstly, the pace at which the story unfolds. David Grossman has used this literary technique brilliantly wherein he lets the story drip drop by drop through exquisite flash backs that meander through multiple timelines. After building a particular story strand to a crescendo, he takes the reader on a different track with a deft feint and then gently weaves in the original strand to gently complete the mosaic. The story often reads like a thriller. Secondly, the lyrical prose that dots the entire book. I was giddy with joy to read passage after passage of exquisite beauty. There is a majestic rhythm to David Grossman’s prose that propels the plot, illuminates its characters, and shapes the book. Finally, the emotional depths of motherhood that the narrative describes. Some of the passages are absolutely stunning. Considering that the book has been written by a male writer, it is a testimony to his aesthetic sensibilities as much to his powerful imagination to have succeeded in such a grand fashion. Let me leave you with a passage where Ora is describing the time when she was pregnant carrying Ofer: “He was tearing her up from the inside, flailing around and beating his fists against the walls of her body. He claimed her for himself unconditionally, demanded that she vacate her own being and dedicate herself to him eternally, that she think about him all the time and talk about him incessantly, that she tell anyone she meet s about him, even the trees and the rocks and the thistles, and that she say his name out loud and silently over and over again so as not to forget him even for a moment, even for a second and that she not abandon him because he needed her now in order to exist - she suddenly knew that this was what his biting meant.” [p 150] I will go with 5 stars.

• perfect

  Thank you!

• AWESOME

  AWESOME

• A long slow suck

  To End of the Land takes us on an extended backpack across the Israeli landscape. As we accompany Ora, her lifelong friend and sometimes lover, Avram, and a stray dog that adopts them, we breathe the air and tread the soil of their troubled homeland. There are some among us for whom a two week stroll through the wilderness--cut off from the world of current events, cell phones and the comforts of home-- would be the most wonderful of luxuries. And then there are those who would view this same adventure as nothing less than an interminable nightmare to be avoided at all cost. Likewise there are those who will find this novel, devoid of the comforts of plot and action, interminable and discomforting. And then there will be others, like myself, who will find it a delicious treat--a long slow suck to be savored from the first sentence to the last. To the End of the Land, to be sure, is a long, meandering tale in which strikingly little happens. Like a wilderness trek, destination for Grossman is beside the point--it's the journey itself, and what you notice, and what you think about, along the way, which is the objective. Emotions, the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and the minutiae of daily life are what interests Grossman, not happenings--or at least not happenings that aren't filtered first through the distorting lens of emotion. For 650 pages Grossman meanders slowly through the inner life of his main character. As Ora hikes up and down, over, and around the mountains of northern Israel, we become entangled in her complex emotional life. Even more than Avram, who is privy only to her spoken words, we are her confidants as she contemplates her relationships with her sons and lovers. By the time we reach the end of the novel we know more about Ora, what she thinks about, and what she feels, than we do about even our most intimate associates. And yet, there is nothing extraordinary or even particularly compelling about her. Neurotic, annoying, malignantly insecure, self-centered, and bereft of insight and perspective, Ora's failings, obsessions and vulnerabilities are the substance of this psychological novel. Why should the inner life of this imperfect heroine interest us? For many it won't, but for me, it was precisely Ora's flaws that made her so interesting, so real, so Human, and in the end so appealing. For this reader at least, Human weakness is ever so much more interesting than its opposite. To wander so deeply into the emotional wilderness of a female character, especially one as flawed as Ora, is dangerous terrain for a male author. With his preoccupation with emotional nuance and interpersonal detail, Grossman writes with a feminine sensibility that, depending on one's perspective, the reader will find either courageous or audacious. As a male reader, I am perhaps a suspect judge, but I felt that, after my walk with Ora, I not only understand her, but had new insights into the flesh and blood women in my own life. While never polemical, To the End of the Land is without a question a political novel. Israeli politics are more than a backdrop; they are the novel's subject. Curiously, Grossman has chosen to show us Israel through the eyes of a character for whom politics is at best a peripheral concern. Ora certainly doesn't dwell much on geo-political questions except where they affect her directly. We never learn what her views are--most likely they are too nebulous to be put into words. Ora is not ignorant, she is all too aware of how political forces beyond her control have shaped her life. But for her it is all an intrusion; she would prefer to be left alone. As much as she is a woman, mother, wife and lover, Ora is an Israeli--and for Israelis escaping from politics is more or less impossible. Ora is as much a part of the land she is walking through as the stones she steps over. She can no more escape political realities than she can learn to fly. In a sense she is Israel. Her imperfections and her pain echo those of her country. Like Israel, Ora's troubles are largely of her own making. And like Israel, the degree to which we embrace her has to do with our willingness to forgive her her many mistakes. Ora senses the contradictions, suffers the guilt, and struggles to make sense of the tragedy playing out in her homeland, and yet she doesn't quite have the insight to put it all together into a coherent picture. This, too, echoes her more personal struggle to understand herself--she see the pieces but can't quite put them together. This artful weaving together of the political and the personal is perhaps the novel's greatest strength. Like its main character, the novel has its imperfections. Where the novel is weakest is when it makes forays away from Ora's inner life into the minds of the other characters. The novel would feel less unbounded if told exclusively from Ora's perspective. We should only know what Ora knows and feel what Ora feels. At times, Grossman seems torn between wanting to follow this artistic constraint and his desire to show us things beyond Ora's periphery. He attempts to resolve this by having her know things that seem improbable. The long section when Ora relates the story of Ilan's attempted rescue of Avram feels contrived because it is unbelievable that she could relate this story with such detail having heard it only once over twenty years ago. In this section the author has strayed from Ora's inner life into Ilan's, and this lack of artistic discipline weakens the novel. I also think that, given the breadth of detail about Ora's relationship with her sons and their fathers, the lack of detail about her family of origin is wanting. I can't help but think that if I knew more about her past I might understand her better. It seems likely that during her long introspective trek she would have reflected on the dynamics of the home she grew up in. However, these flaws are minor, compared to the novel's strengths. What Grossman has pulled off is rare in contemporary literature: a novel that works on both a microcosmic, personal level and a macrocosmic, societal level. Its scope is much broader than much of contemporary literature and yet he does this without sacrificing the intimate. I appreciated its slow, meticulous cadence and highly recommend this worthy read.

• Painful reader

  Nobody can be blamed for the present situation. No scapegoats!

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