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 be modeled on Grossman's son, Uri), fighting the 2000 offensive in the Occupied Territories. Read "The Unconsoled," George Packer's nuanced, probing profile of Grossman's complexity and understand why you have to read this book. It is a long read, at almost 600 pages, but powerfully covers the turbulent political and emotional history of Israel from 1967 almost to present.

It really makes you have sympathy for progressive Israelis who know their country is doomed but still love it and feel its the only home in the world for them. As Ora poignantly observes, "I always think: This is my country, and I really don't have anywhere else to go. Where would I go? Tell me, where else could I get so annoyed about everything, and who would want me anyway? But at the same time I also know that it doesn't really have a chance, this country. It just doesn't...If you think about it logically, if you just think numbers and facts and history, with no illusions, it doesn't have a chance" (p. 322? "Ilan Came Home" chapter).