(Sorry for the reposting and then taking down and then reposting. This book I feel I owe something to...)

You cannot point out a star to someone without putting your other hand on his shoulder.

David Grossman wrote To The End Of The Land while his second eldest son was serving in the military. He wrote the novel as if doing so would protect him. It didn't save his life. The quote from the New York Times Book Review on the cover says "One of those few novels that feels as though they have made a d More...

Loving this book. Many possible interpretations so far. I like the dual nature of the story, Avram/Ilan, Adam/Ofer, Military leave/Torture, Jewish/Palestinian, Volunteer for service/Take military leave, Responsibility for the other man's child/Escape from own child, etc...

I'm reading this with the following quote in mind: "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man" - look it up if you haven't come across it. Now, what if both men marry the bride, and both men have 1 child with th More...

What an entrancing introduction to the work of acclaimed, progressive Israeli novelist David Grossman, whose son died fighting in the conflict with Lebanon in 2006. Though Grossman wrote much of this novel before that tragedy, it fully informs and casts its shadow over the narrative. Grossman, in a sense, had been writing the book to protect his son, just as his protagonist Ora goes on a desperate hike with her former lover in the Galilee to avoid any bad news related to her son, Ofer (who must More...

A complex, thought-provoking novel set in Israel in the first decade of the 21st c. The narrative jumps between two friends/lovers hiking and the stories of their lives and children. It makes clear what it's like to be a born-in-Israel but rather secular Jewish Israeli -- a whole generation of people. They fear for their small, (too?) proud country, but they are also afraid of what the militaristic zeal of Israel and its many armed conflicts has done to families and to the character of Jewish an More...

I am not an Israeli mother, but I don't think I've ever related more to a mom in a book than I did to the Israeli mother in this book. My situation is completely different than hers, yet I found myself in her mistakes, in her anxieties, and in her attempts to ward off evil. Thank you, David Grossman, for sharing such personal insights into what it is to be a parent.

Ora, une femme séparée depuis peu d’Ilan, son mari, quitte son foyer de Jérusalem et fuit la nouvelle inéluctable que lui dicte son instinct maternel : la mort de son second fils, Ofer, qui, sur le point de terminer son service militaire, s’est porté volontaire pour « une opération d'envergure » de 28 jours dans une ville palestinienne, nouvelle que lui apporteraient l’officier et les soldats affectés à cette terrible tâche. Mais s’il faut une personne pour délivrer un message, il en faut une po More...

I am in Paris, and have been in Berlin and Barcelona for 3 weeks before that.

I have bought SO many books, and visited the best bookstores in the world: two of which were in Berlin.

Today I went to Shakespeare and co, and got some contemporary French translations, so I need to plough through this so I can get started on the 15 other books im lugging around from my trip purchases. Hard to carry for 7 weeks!

.........

Just finished this an I am too emotional to write about it a) because the book total More...

Come recensire un romanzo simile? Da dove iniziare? Di fronte a questo romanzo le dita si bloccano, la lingua si frena: come si può dire l'impronunciabile, esprimere l'inesprimibile?

La verità è che A un cerbiatto somiglia il mio amore, un romanzo che reca nel suo titolo, sapientemente scelto dal traduttore italiano, il Cantico dei Cantici, è un romanzo complesso, infinitamente coinvolgente, una spirale chiusa che ti stritola senza via di scampo. Un romanzo che finisce con l'esaltare la Vita, ma More...

To the End of the Land by David Grossman is a very powerful novel set in the nation of Israel. In this novel, Ora,the mother of 2 sons, decides to go on a hike in the Galilee area after her younger son Offer volunteers for an additional 28 days of service in the Israeli Army. She fears that he will be killed and decides that she will not be home in case officials come to tell her he has been killed. In her mind, she has convinced herself that if she is not home to be informed, then he will be sa More...

I was at a Bar Mitzvah, standing around with drink in hand, when someone I only see at Bar Mitzvahs told me about this book with the kind of passion and conviction that made me sure I wanted to read it. (And I typically resist reading any book I'm told I must read.) She was right. In recent years I don't read as many novels as I once did, and it perhaps matters more, therefore, when reading one really seems to have made a difference. When I ask myself if I've read anything that might one day be More...

I don’t know why I chose to start with David Grossman’s epic - 600 page - To the End of the Land, perhaps I was persuaded by repeated appearance on top lists of 2010s or perhaps I wanted to tackle (and defeat) one of the longest books on the list early on, but I chose it and I’m glad I did.

The book follows Ora and Avram as they walk across Israel. Ora tells Avram the stories of her children and her life in an effort to fulfill the bargain she demands of fate: by telling the stories of her son, O More...

Ora, une femme séparée depuis peu de son mari Ilan, quitte son foyer de Jérusalem et fuit la nouvelle tant redoutée : la mort de son second fils, Ofer, qui, sur le point de terminer son service militaire, s’est porté volontaire pour « une opération d'envergure » de vingt-huit jours dans une ville palestinienne. Comme pour conjurer le sort, elle décide de s’absenter durant cette période : tant que les messagers de la mort ne la trouveront pas, son fils sera sauf. La randonnée en Galilée qu’elle a More...

Israel is a tiny country. How long can it take to hike around the northern half of it? As I turned the last page, I told myself: “It can’t take more time than it took me to read this novel.” I’ve read eight-hundred-page textbooks faster and many of them were denser than David Grossmans rendering of this hike.

It may have just as well been called Ora’s Odyssey for it conjures up that kind of timeframe. Ora is the mother of two young Israeli men, soldiers. One on active duty during the Intifada. He More...

A well written (and translated) book but long. Slow going in the beginning and the last 300 pages are the best. I feel pity for this mother who seems uncomfortable in her own skin.

"Truth be told, she does not ye feel ready to admit to him, to an almost stranger, how amazed she was, and how it taunted her even to see how this young woman effortlessly attained something she herself had never even tried to demand from her three men: their full recognition of the fact that she was a woman, her disc More...

Everything seems to have been written and said about this book: hailed by most as a masterpiece, it has quickly found its place among the great literary achievements of our time. Deservedly so. Dominated by the towering figure of a mother figure that is both uniquely israeli and universal, this novel encompasses so many subjects, so many characters, so many events, that to reduce it to a few lines doesn't do it justice. Complex and emotionally very powerful, lyrically written by a writer who see More...

This book is powerful and ambitious, with many scenes that will stay in my mind a long time - I've already found myself retelling them to people in more detail than is probably appreciated. I loved the sections on Ora's family life and particularly about what it was like for her as the only woman in a household of militarised men, or more simply as the mother of two sons. Grossman is hugely moving and perceptive in writing about motherhood and conveys what it might mean to bring up sons in a cou More...

This book, set in Israel between 1967 and 2000, works on many levels: anti-war book; story about relationships (male/female; parent/child; siblings); an ode to the beauty of the Israeli landscape.

When her son Ofer volunteers for an additional twenty-eight day tour of duty after he has completed his normal period of military service, it is the fear that the “notifiers” will come to give her terrible news that causes Ora to decide to go on an extended hike along the Israel Trail. If she is not at More...

A huge, orchestral, rambling, occasionally hysterical, deeply emotional and significant novel on family, Israel, war, and love of and fear for one's children. I thought I knew a thing or two about Israel but before this book I did not feel in my bones the way in which the political situation in that country literally maddens its inhabitants. Ora, Avram, and Ilan are three teenagers who form an intense bond when they are all hospitalized with hepatitis in a nearly abandoned hospital during the Si More...

Initially when I started reading the book, I could not get past the hospital opening scenes. The book was going very slow. Then I switched to listening the audio book and the book went better. I sympathized with the main character Ora. Fistly, I must confess, I like the name Ora - it rolls very well on my tongue. My book club members got very frustrated with Ora's character. But I felt the agony and desperation that drove Ora to set out on her hike with Avram. I feel she is the most strong, acti More...

This book is one of the most difficult to read I have picked up in a long time. It is set in Israel in the 1960s to the 2000s. It explores the emotional depths of Ora, a woman who married one man, Ilan, had a son with him, Adam, had an affair with her husband's friend, Avram, and had a son with him, Ofer. The husband and his friend served in the Israeli army in the war with Egypt in the Sinai Penninsula, and the friend was captured and tortured. Both of her sons fulfilled their obligatory servic More...

What this book could have been like with a decent editor! I read it on my Kindle, so I have no idea how many printed pages it was, but it felt like the reading equivalent of the Bataan Death March. And since so much of the narrative unfolds during a hike across Israel by two of the main characters, the comparison to the Bataan Death March felt pretty apt. Which isn't to say there aren't things to like about this book. The accounts of the events of the lives of the 2 sons from birth through child More...

I feel a bit guilty about not having become more absorbed in this novel. Several of my friends, whose taste in literature I respect, felt Grossman's "To the End of the Land" was the best thing since sliced bread (since I have started spending time in France, this expression baffles me--was sliced bread really a step forward? Anyway . . . ) . It was for me slow and even at times tedious. The premise is enticing. A young Israeli, who has already fulfilled his compulsory military service, volunteer More...

This book is absolutely heartbreaking, which makes it somewhat hard to critique, because the reader feels an absolute allegiance to the author. The book is amazing in many ways, and the translation is excellent. The themes of our common humanity and the dehumanization of living in a culture of war are extremely powerful. Much of the writing is beautiful, and the unique and passionate character of Avram is the strongest element of the book. The story of Ora, Avram, and Ilan is very compelling and More...

My reactions to this book are all over the map, as it were. Part of the time I was quite annoyed with the characters and the author. Some of the dialogue (and perhaps this is just because it's in translation) seemed stilted and improbable to me. (Who doesn't wish they could go back and have the perfect conversation with an ex-lover where they neatly sum everything up and get to go on and on about their life since the breakup in mundane detail? And for those who do wish that - what the heck is wr More...

They sit quietly, digesting. Ora hugs her knees, rationalizing that she isn't all that accessible and permeable even to herself anymore, and that even she herself doesn't go near that place inside of her. It must be that she's growing old, she decides--for some time now she's had a strange eagerness to pronounce her aging, impatient for the relief that comes with a declaration of total bankruptcy. That's how it goes. You say goodbye to yourself even before other people start to, softening the bl

More...

Ora, an Israeli mother, planned a Galilee backpacking trip with her youngest son, Ofer, to celebrate the end of his army conscription. But, like a fist through her soul, he signed up for a major offensive, another twenty-eight days. Barely holding her sanity together--her husband, Ilan, has trekked off to Bolivia with her oldest son, Adam--she flees from her fear of the "notifiers" (the government officials who deliver grave news) and leaves, anyway, sans cell phone and contact access.

Ora pleads More...

I can't remember who suggested this book to me - I found it in my "Books" list as I was looking for something to read on my last business trip. So, without knowing entirely what I was getting into, within a few pages I found myself completely engaged in this complex story. Grossman manipulated my attention by starting the narrative with the main characters as teenagers - you get only glimpses of where he going. In fact, that's a technique he uses to carry the reader through even the most difficu More...

I am not sure exactly what I thought of this book. I do know it felt like I was slogging through it the entire time. I found the author's style of telling the story a bit annoying with alot of jumping around between events in the present and those of the past i.e. modern Isreal where the story takes place. Central character ORA decides to hike northern Isreal when her youngest son goes off on a military offensive so that she won't be at home when they come to tell her he's been killed. At times More...

This novel is exceptional, astute, and heartbreaking. Translated from the Hebrew, it is a truly momentous anti-war novel set in Israel. The present time is 21st Century. Important flashbacks to various post-WW II times in Israel's history, all war torn, are instrumental. I am not usually a fan of magical realism, but this novel succeeds brilliantly with that device. Time is very fluid - the present and the past(s) are covered not sequentially at all, but the way we deal with time within the huma More...