De mine viața și-a tot râs

by David Grossman, Gheorghe Miletineanu (trad.)

În toamna anului 1951, Vera, evreică şi activistă în contraspionajul Armatei de Eliberare Naţională a Iugoslaviei, e arestată. Soţul ei, Miloš, ofiţer în cavaleria mareşalului Tito, tocmai se spînzurase. Profund îndrăgostită, Vera îşi apără bărbatul şi refuză cu încăpăţînare să semneze actul prin care acesta ar fi fost declarat duşman al poporului şi spion sovietic al lui Stalin. Prin urmare, va fi aruncată în lagăr şi torturată, nevoită să-şi lase fiica, micuţa Nina, în voia sorţii. O rană adîncă le va despărţi. Odată reunite, se vor putea împăca, oare, cu trecutul, sau blestemul va fi transmis din generaţie în generaţie? Zeci de ani mai tîrziu, înarmată cu o cameră video, Ghili, fiica Ninei şi nepoata Verei, reconstituie odiseea familiei.

„Cu ani în urmă, am vrut să scriu o colecţie de poveşti de dragoste adevărată – şi nimeni nu avea una ca a ei. Primul ei soţ s-a sinucis pe vremea cînd era prizonierul serviciilor secrete ale lui Tito, în 16 octombrie 1951. An de an, în 16 octombrie, o sunam şi-i spuneam: mi-am amintit că astăzi e ziua lui Rade, soţul tău. Plîngea ca şi cum el abia murise. Era bîntuită de această întrebare: de ce a făcut-o, de ce n-a putut fi îndeajuns de puternic pentru a depăşi tortura, cum a fost ea? Vorbea cu atîta duioşie despre el, această femeie – atît de neclintită în privinţa ideologiilor, dar atît de tandră în iubire.” (David Grossman, Elle, Italia)

„Grossman – ca şi Oz – nu împarte lumea aceea în buni şi răi, nu ţine cu unii împotriva celorlalţi, nu are «soluţii», nici iluzii, nu urăşte decît războiul acela dintre două adevăruri la fel de îndreptăţite. Unul dintre acei romancieri – nu chiar foarte mulţi – pe care putem conta.” (Radu Cosaşu, Dilema veche)

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Israel, Jewish, Literary Fiction, Historical, Audiobook

296 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2019

About the author

From ithl.org:

Leading Israeli novelist David Grossman (b. 1954, Jerusalem) studied philosophy and drama at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later worked as an editor and broadcaster at Israel Radio. Grossman has written seven novels, a play, a number of short stories and novellas, and a number of books for children and youth. He has also published several books of non-fiction, including interviews with Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Among Grossman`s many literary awards: the Valumbrosa Prize (Italy), the Eliette von Karajan Prize (Austria), the Nelly Sachs Prize (1991), the Premio Grinzane and the Premio Mondelo for The Zig-Zag Kid (Italy, 1996), the Vittorio de Sica Prize (Italy), the Juliet Club Prize, the Marsh Award for Children`s Literature in Translation (UK, 1998), the Buxtehude Bulle (Germany, 2001), the Sapir Prize for Someone to Run With (2001), the Bialik Prize (2004), the Koret Jewish Book Award (USA, 2006), the Premio per la Pace e l`Azione Umanitaria 2006 (City of Rome/Italy), Onorificenza della Stella Solidarita Italiana 2007, Premio Ischia - International Award for Journalism 2007, the Geschwister Scholl Prize (Germany), the Emet Prize (Israel, 2007)and the Albatross Prize (Germany, 2009). He has also been awarded the Chevalier de l`Ordre des Arts et Belles Lettres (France, 1998) and an Honorary Doctorate by Florence University (2008). In 2007, his novels The Book of Internal Grammar and See Under: Love were named among the ten most important books since the creation of the State of Israel. His books have been translated into over 25 languages.

See also other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[Canadian Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know with a title like this, it’s going to be a story that delivers a gut punch.

This is a generational story. Vera, remarries and takes on a new family after serving time on Goli Otok in the 50’s. Her daughter, Nina, from her first marriage, runs away but not before she has sex with her step brother and leaves him for years only to come back and have a child with him before she leaves again.

Vera the step mother is 90 now. A grandiose party is held bringing everyone together. The estranged daughter, Nina, wants to do a film of her life as she has been diagnosed with dementia. A journey through her mom’s past to bring peace with the sacrifice made. Her daughter, Gili, abandoned by this gypsy mother, is to film it with her father.
Such sacred bounds between mother and daughter despite the rift - the ultimate abandonment and betrayal.
Beautifully written but so devastatingly tragic.
I shivered when this story ended.

My only pet peeve with this which is minor- was it had no chapters! I like to try to finish a chapter before I stop reading.
Still a very worthy 5⭐️read.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unconditional love and the long tentacles of war, engulf three generations of women and the man who loved all of them. Vera, Nina and Gili, each with their own experiences, impacted by Vera and her horrific war experiences and the decisions she made in the past.

This author, though male, does a terrific job describing women, treating them with respect and empathy. Not an easy feat. This book also describes an area of which I have read little. Yugoslavia and Tito. An impactful book, taking us from a kibbutz in Israel, to Yugoslavia and a journey into the past. Secrets kept, one in particular, that led the way to dysfunctional relationships between mothers and daughter. Also, a journey of revelation, healing and a new understanding. How did the decisions made in the past, alter their present?

A terrific book, and a wonderful translation.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Gili, in you I want to put everything I had in life. Everything”.
“I don’t understand, Grandma”…….
Gili ‘will’ come to understand- and so will we—the readers.

“The heart pangs”……
stumbling on “an invisible barbed wire”……

SOOOOO GOOD!!!
David Grossman continues to be one of my all-time favorite authors.
“More Than I Love My Life”….
is an intimate-extended-family-journey-filled with awe -power-and humanity.
inspired by a true story!

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up.

Three generations divided by the trauma of being abandoned, travel together to the gulag of the elder one’s past.

A gut wrenching journey, reliving the past, facing the truth , that may take them to a place in their hearts where forgiveness and redemption can be found .

That it is based on the life of a friend of David Grossman makes it all the more meaningful.

Half a star off for being a little slow at first , but worth the pace .

I received a copy of this book from Knopf/Random House through Edelweiss.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books change when you listen to the author speak about them. I read this one before I sat in a crowded lecture hall (finally! We are having fully booked cultural events again!) and heard David Grassman speak about what moves him and how he makes choices as a writer. The book got a completely new shape in my head afterwards, as it got a signature too, forever moving it to a different shelf in my bookcase - the one for "met the author, got a signed copy".

And it is not even so much that I read the story differently after listening to David Grossman's reflections, it is more a case of "feeling" what I had previously just "thought". The book went under my skin again, deeper than when I read it!

Irony has it that I randomly picked this novel to cure my broken reader's heart after Shuggie Bain (which proudly resides next to More Than I Love My Life on that favourite shelf of mine, thanks to my city's slow cultural re-awakening).

Let's just say that was a bad choice.

But only because my reasoning was faulty.

The book is absolutely, heartbreakingly wonderful.

If Shuggie showed one way in which we fail our children, Nina's story as told by Grossman shows another. Absent parents, self-absorbed parents, traumatised parents ... the impact on the vulnerable souls of children is immeasurable in absolute numbers. It takes literature and storytelling to give a hint of the evolving truth of each person's emergence from their specific childhood cocoon. This is the story about parents who are strong where Shuggie Bain's parents were weak, but it is also proof that heroic life can be as detrimental to an individual child as the slow dissolution of a family in the shadow of alcohol and poverty.

The choices made out of pride and stubbornness and determination, deemed necessary and heroic on the big scale, ultimately mean that a girl is uprooted and lost on the small scale of private childhood. Even if the fight against history and politics is lauded and idealised in the collective mindset of retrospective analysis, the question becomes burning hot whether it is ethically right to sacrifice the life of a living child to the impeccable memory of a dead man and a perfect love story.

More than I love my life... that statement, applied to the love between a man and a woman, is tainted with the story of the pawn of that pure love: the child left behind to fend for herself while the parents died and suffered.

What is right? What is love? What is family?

These questions remain, and answers there are as many as there are feeling hearts in the mix.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A multigenerational story of love and loss
Three women in one family
Very moving
Based on the true story of Eva-Panic Nahir

I had no idea when reading this that it was based on a true story.

Here is the link to read more:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haar...

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

An emotive story and interesting characters is not fully done justice by the set-up of the story or the narrative voice used by the author. At times fairytale like, at times horrific, I would have been more impressed if this would have been a personal reflection on mother-daughter relations
In their own limited, fucked up way they were being my parents

The theme of this year's International Booker Prize is definitely mothers. In More Than I Love My Life we follow the fascinating family history of partisans being prosecuted in Yuguslavia, and the ramification over generation this has. I felt oddly untouched by the book and David Grossman his writing, maybe because of the structure with a modern day daughter who just felt a bit superfluous to the story and compared to the horrors her grandmother and mother endured. Also I was strongly reminded of The Book of Mother, also long listed for the prize this year, by a debut author and also dealing about fraught mother-daughter relations. And that book just did so much more on an emotional level for me, that this book, despite its harrowing subject, kind of pales in comparison. By no means this is a bad book, I just expected much more of David Grossman.
The tone of More Than I Love My Life is very detached, not fully doing justice to the weight of events from a certain perspective, and the narrative voice of the moviemaker narrator Gili does not help.

Nina is her detached mother, called a life poser by her daughter. Nina abandoned Gili, but was in the same manner abandoned by her mother Vera in post-war Yugoslavia.
The daughter taking over the role of mother, including an overbearing fascination for her father (The wound of his life bled a little, drops, no more, is something that comes back a lot in the first part of the books. Vera is definitely the star of the book, and the three generations travelling back from their kibbutz to the "naked" island where she was tortured (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...).

I must say that Vera her story, of an all-encompassing love for her first husband Milos, who committed suicide in the cells of the Tito regime, was deeply moving and lyrically told. It reminded me of the historical scenes from Everything Is Illuminated.

Nina is also given depth on account of her suffering from a progressive illness (with her trying to craft A bedtime story before she goes into the dark being especially tender scenes). Here I found Gili as a daughter especially unforgiving. With Nina being abandoned on the streets of Yugoslavia for years, alluded to in vivid and horrible detail by Vera, one would suspect that Gidi could have been more emphatic. Like I’m constantly playing almost the right note she says somewhere and Wanted and desired and wanted again as goal, something that made my hear at least go out for her.

However the feeling of slipping back into childhood patterns of resentment is definitely realist as well, so it does create an interesting tension. Gidi her further life is thinly sketched, I found her a bit superfluous to the overall tale. In her victimhood and competition with her mother she just feels rather unnecessary for the story, something on which she even herself reflects: Who am i without hating Nina

Grandmother Vera reminds me of how Marina Abramović talks about her youth in Yugoslavia. Continuing the fucked up dynasty is certainly an apt way of putting how trauma reverberated through the women central to this book and one definitely can understand the following saying through the events of the book: God has a large imagination for trouble.

In the end I find the central "secret" of the book rather weak as an axis to base the book on: how can you judge someone and say she betrayed someone in those conditions of tyranny?
The whole sprained ankle scene near the end of the book is also rather unbelievable.

Overall this is a book putting the focus on an important history, but slightly lacking in execution to go with the gravitas of the subject.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend the audio of “More Than I Love My Life” by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen and performed by Gilli Messer. Messer narrates the voices with aplomb and skill. Her eastern European accented English lends the audio authenticity to this rich and involved story. If I allowed a criticism, it would be that it was overly ambitious…..there is a lot going on. So much, that after finishing the audio, I needed to go back to the beginning to remember how this all started. There are an abundant of tangents that throw the story at times.

This is a story of three generations of women who suffered loss which resulted in abandonment. It’s a story of women attempting to find forgiveness and understanding of each other. The story begins with a birthday party for 90-year-old Vera. Gili, Vera’s granddaughter, is now a documentary filmmaker, decides to document Vera’s life. Vera was sent to Goli Otok, the Adriatic prison island, after refusing to renounce her dead husband as being a Stalinist. Her daughter Nina, Gili’s mother, felt abandoned by both parents because at age 6, she was sent to live with her hateful aunt. What Vera endured is unfathomable.

Vera is released after 3 years and moves to a kibbutz in Israel with Nina. Nina never rebounds from her feelings of abandonment and her story is almost as tragic as Vera’s. Nina marries, has Gili, and abandons Gili. Luckily for Gili, Vera raises her along with Gili’s father.

The three women, plus Gili’s father, also a filmmaker, venture to record Vera’s story. Nina adds her tragic parts, and Gili struggles to understand motive and revelations. Generations of suffering, grief, loss, and trauma snowball into a heartbreaking story.

Adding impact is that this story is loosely based on a Yugoslavian partisan fighter.

Even with all the tangents, which were close to being a distraction, this is a fantastic audio.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How many lies can you stuff into one person's life before the brain starts leaking?"

David Grossman's novel is a three generational family saga. Vera, the feisty and strong matriarch, has lived on a kibbutz in Israel for many years. She is well-respected and loved by many. Her second husband is deceased, but his extensive family, as well as the entire Kibbutz community, adore this formidable woman. But there is another side to Vera, a person who "will twist the arm of any fact until it confesses". What baggage did Vera and her young daughter Nina bring with them from Yugoslavia in the early to mid-1950s?

All those who know Vera love her, except, perhaps her elusive and troubled daughter, Nina. Nina is in and out of the lives of her husband Rafi and their daughter Gali. Nina, who is unable to stay in one place, unable to love or accept love. Why can't she move beyond these early memories, the memories of loss and betrayal?

In order to record Vera's history and bring closure to haunting memories, Vera, Nina, Gali, and Rafi travel to Vera's homeland, the former Yugoslavia. All would be filmed to explain and preserve. Happy memories of the childhood, courtship, and marriage to her beloved first husband, Milosz, brings delight to this aged woman, but there are memories of horror too. Tito's secret police incarcerate Milosz who is suspected to be a Stalin sympathizer. Vera makes a devastating choice which results in her imprisonment at a gulag camp called Goli Otok, known as the Adriatic Alcatraz. Equally horrific is her separation from the very young Nina. Some memories are lost to time, some to dementia, and some need to be recreated in order to justify a poor choice. This unfortunate choice resulted in three generations of secrets, lies, and trauma.

Grossman beautifully explores how the past can reverberate through generations, changing who we are, how we act, and how we react. He also examines how powerful love is and how redemptive it can be. And, maybe the most troubling theme is how we can convince ourselves that the truth was not actually true. If we are unable to fully absorb the consequences of a dire mistake, our mind allows us to change the facts. Denial can give peace.

In the acknowledgments, Grossman explains that the character of Vera was based on a Yugoslavian partisan fighter who wanted her story told but allowed the author the freedom to invent and change as needed. For me, knowing a character was based on an actual person intensifies the story, but that was not really necessary; it was powerful enough.

It was very evident why this author has been translated into so many languages, why he has been the recipient of many prestigious literary awards. Although this my first Grossman novel, it definitely will not be my last.

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simplesmente perfeito!
Aqui visitamos Goli Otok, considerada a "Alcatraz do Adriático", um campo de trabalhos forçados criado por Tito para castigar os que não se dobravam à sua vontade. Vera (inspirada em Eva Panić Nahir) foi prisioneira em Goli Otok durante quase dois anos, deixando para trás a pequena Nina, com apenas seis anos e meio. Décadas mais tarde, com as feridas ainda bem abertas, Vera, Nina, Rafi e Guilli (filha destes) decidem fazer a viagem ao inferno e contar todos os segredos que ficaram por revelar.
Esta não é apenas uma descida aos horrores de um campo de concentração. Longe disso. Esta é uma história sobre as consequências de algumas decisões na nossas vidas e nas vidas dos outros. Há marcas tão profundas que atravessam gerações.
Numa rápida pesquisa no Google, vi que Eva faleceu em 2015 (existe um documentário sobre ela) e soube que a ilha está abandonada. É bom que a literatura a resgate. Quando já nada diz de si, restam as palavras.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

Rafael was fifteen years old when his mother died and put him out of her misery. Rain poured down on the mourners huddled under umbrellas in the small kibbutz cemetery. Tuvia, Rafael’s father, sobbed bitterly. He had cared for his wife devotedly for years and now looked lost and bereft. Rafael, wearing shorts, stood apart from the others and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his eyes so that no one would know he wasn’t crying. He thought: Now that she’s dead, she can see all the things I thought of her.

That was in the winter of 1962. A year later his father met Vera Novak, who had come to Israel from Yugoslavia, and they became a couple. Vera had arrived with her only daughter, Nina, a tall, fair- haired girl of seventeen whose long face, which was pale and very beautiful, showed almost no expression.

The boys in Rafael’s class called Nina “Sphinx.” They would sneak behind her and mimic her gait, the way she hugged her body and stared ahead vacantly. When she once caught two kids imitating her, she simply pummeled them bloody. They’d never seen such fighting on the kibbutz. It was hard to believe how much ferocious strength she had in her thin arms and legs. Rumors started flying. They said that while her mother was a political prisoner in the Gulag, little Nina had lived on the streets. The streets, they said, with a meaningful look. They said that in Belgrade she’d joined a gang of feral kids who kidnapped children for ransom. That’s what they said. People say things.

More Than I Love My Life is translated by Jessica Cohen from the 2019 Hebrew original אתי החיים משחק הרבה by David Grossman, the same author-translator team that deservedly won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for the brilliant A Horse Walks Into a Bar.

The novel based on the real-life story of Eva Panić Nahir, which is summarised in this article from Haaretz from 2003 https://www.haaretz.com/1.5495098. The documentary referred to in the article can be found, subtitled, on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Erw-lDi93-Y and Eva’s story was also the subject of an earlier documentary in 1990, co-written by the novelist Danilo Kis, Goli Zivot.

Eva Panic and her husband Rade were loyal members of Tito’s partisans in WW2, helping save many from Nazi forces, although Eva’s own parents died in Auschwitz. But in the post world-war rift between Tito and Stalin, Rade was accused, in 1951, of being a Russian spy (an accusation fiercely denied by Eva until her death in 2015 aged 96).

Rade, his world collapsing around him, hung himself in his prison cell. And Eva was confronted with a stark choice by the authorities - denounce Rade as a spy, go free abs receive a pension; or herself go to prison, practically orphaning her 6 year daughter Tiana. Eva chose prison, and in effect loyalty to her late husband over her own but also her daughter’s welfare, and was sent to forced labour in the Goli Otok women’s camp on an island, a place whose very existence was a taboo topic in Yugoslavia until after Tito’s death in 1980 (the aforementioned 1990 documentary one of the first on the camp).

Eva later moved to Israel, to live in a kibbutz, and remarried a widower, albeit making it clear to him that Rade remained her own true love. Tiana and Eva only really discussed Eva’s decision, and its adverse implications for Tiana, in the 2003 Israeli documentary, which also features Tiana’s daughter Emily.

David Grossman had befriended Eva a few years before the 2003 documentary, after she wrote to him to correct a newspaper article he had written. She told him her and Tiana’s story and asked him to novelise it, the two women granting him (per the afterword) “the freedom to tell the story but also to imagine and invent it in ways it never existed” and this book is the result.

In the novel, Eva becomes Vera Novak, the elderly matriarch of her family, her 1st husband Milosz, and Tiana becomes Nina. But Grossman introduces additional dramatic, and I believe fictional, elements: Vera’s 2nd husband Tuvia has a son Rafael, and Nina and Rafael sleep together, have a tempestuous relationship and a daughter, Gili, before the troubled Nina leaves her newborn baby in Rafael’s care and flees Israel.

Rafael and Gili, who narrates the novel, are both filmmakers and indeed they make a documentary as the family, including Nina, reunite to celebrate Vera’s 90th birthday before travelling to Croatia to trace Vera’s past.

The novel opens, with the passage that begins my review, with Gili recounting Rafael and Nina’s first meeting as related to her over the years by her father, the meeting just after Rafael’s mother had died following a lengthy illness, leaving the 15 year-old boy emotionally numb.

At times the fidelity to both the fictional project and the non-fictional truth can create a tension, with certain elements of the real-life story included but not really done justice (it reminded me a little of the same phenomenon in film adaptions of novels) and some additional storylines included for effect (Rafael’s affair with Nina) in a story that hardly needs more drama. The, literal, framing device of Gili’s film can also at times be a little forced.

Nevertheless Grossman is a master craftsman and brings the characters to life, and a strong sense of compassion to the story, the fiercely determined Vera on the page consistent with the Eva of the documentary (a reference to her determinedly striding around the Kibbutz swimming pool for her morning exercise taken directly from a scene in the film). But then I found myself questioning whether I needed the book to illuminate what was already apparent from the film.

Grossman is also adept at linking the personal and political, and while he never needs to state it, the novel can be read as a parable for how the traumas of the 20th century, and totalitarianism, echo even today in the lives not just of individuals but also of nation states.

Overall, 3.5 stars. While I admire Grossman as a novelist that if anything meant I came into this with (too high?) expectations and this lacked the wit and sheer inventiveness of A Horse Walked Into a Bar. But a book I would not be surprised to see featuring in the longlist for next year’s International Booker.

[But_i_thought_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is clear to see that Grossman is a keen observer of people, of family dynamics. He captures, with infinite care, the micro expressions that give us away. The conversations that occur between people, without a word being said. The way additions and subtractions to the family system alter the entire relational ecosystem, sometimes beyond repair. The flow of stories through this system, and the gentle mutations that happen along the way. The way childhood trauma solidifies us to a specific age, freezing us in time — sometimes poisoning the well for those that follow. And above all: our stripped need, our howl for love.

The plot and characters of this novel are too complex to do justice in a review, but let me briefly introduce you to one of its main characters — Vera Novak. Vera (inspired by the historical figure Eva Panic Nahir, who was a longtime friend and confidante of the author) is a 90-year-old matriarch when the story opens, adored by generations of devoted family members. It is not hard to fall in love with Vera — she is unfiltered, animated, full of enigmatic sayings and peevish optimism, slavish in her care of loved ones, possessing of a devilish sense of humour, and famed for her superhuman determination and resolve. And all this despite having spent years in torture at a Yugoslavian hard labour camp for political prisoners.

Vera’s personality is perhaps best illustrated by an anecdote that occurs early on in the book. In 1963, the widower and esteemed agronomist Tuvia is looking for a new wife. Vera, also widowed, is suggested as a potential mate. A meeting is arranged. During their meeting, Tuvia’s teenage son Rafael bursts into the house, bloodied and bruised from a recent fight. Vera, trying to tend to his wounds, is surprised when he bites her. You wouldn’t blame a prospective bride for running the other direction. But for Vera the encounter has the opposite effect. She feels an uncanny pull towards this damaged boy. What use is your idealism, your activism, she decides, if you abandon this child now. This is the moment she decides to join Tuvia’s family and work to win over Rafael’s trust. In this and other ways, the novel examines our capacity for kindness in unusual circumstances – and our ability to love people who are not always easy to love.

But there is also a dark secret at the heart of the novel and it is the reveal of this secret that the novel hurtles towards when Vera – together with Nina (her daughter), Rafael (her adopted son) and Gili (her granddaughter) – decide to undertake a road trip to visit historical landmarks related to her past.

Though there were parts in the middle of the novel that felt slightly laboured (perhaps weighed down by the responsibility of relaying Vera / Eva’s full tale), there were an equal number of scenes and lines that sliced through me. It has been a while since I have been this engrossed in a story, this invested in a set of characters. I ask myself – why did I love this book so much, when it has received universally mixed reviews? Perhaps because I resonate with Grossman’s unique blend of psychology and historical biography. Perhaps because, in the sea of despair and anguish and (intentional) “unlikability” that makes up so much of contemporary literary fiction, this is like a lighthouse emitting hope and clarity and a sense of security. Perhaps because I appreciate the questions Grossman asks about love as homeland, about family as mythology. Perhaps, because, I too would like to believe that we have the capacity to heal from deep wounds – to “repair backwards a little”, as Vera so eloquently puts it.

Pairs well with: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Mood: Devastating and hopeful
Rating: 9/10

Also on Instagram.

[Paula Mota · Rating 5 out of 5]

Em mãos menos sábias, “A Vida Brinca Comigo” e a sua carismática protagonista correriam certamente o risco de se tornar um melodrama choramingas com paragem em todos os chavões possíveis e imaginários, mas a sobriedade de David Grossman faz do percurso da nonagenária Vera uma imersão assombrosa num passado negro comum a todos os países que algum dia passaram por uma ditadura.

Ela tirou rapidamente o fio, as pulseiras e os brincos, pousou-os lado a lado em cima da mala e cobriu-os com o chapéu ridículo. Depois arregaçou com presteza as mangas da camisola e da blusa. Rafael viu então os bíceps e o feixe de tendões. Observou-os com receio: com músculos daqueles como é que ela podia ser mãe de alguém?

Vera Novak, como o jovem Rafi descobre assim que ela entra na vida do seu pai viúvo, não é de todo como as outras mães. Ainda assim, torna-se uma figura maternal para todo o clã Bruck enquanto é repudiada pela própria filha Nina, cuja frieza lendária só poderemos entender no final.

Os lábios de Nina abriram-se de repente num sorriso terrível. Tive a certeza de que era um sorriso involuntário, uma espécie de esgar que Vera desperta em Nina pela sua simples existência, um sorriso de caveira, que menosprezou e refutou instantaneamente todos os elogios que tinham sido concedidos a Vera, como se revelasse uma infâmia escondida...

Confrontada com o mais terrível dos diagnósticos, a traumatizada Nina acompanha a família que abandonou há muitos anos à ilha de Goli Otok, conhecida como a Alcatraz do Adriático, o campo de reeducação onde Nina havia passado mais de dois anos, como opositora ao regime do General Tito. Há ao longo de toda a narrativa a sugestão de que Vera não terá tido um comportamento exemplar com a filha que, com apenas seis anos, se viu subitamente sem ambos os progenitores, e que o amor avassalador que ela sentia pelo primeiro marido, Milosz, talvez lhe tenha toldado o julgamento, mas é só nesse inóspito gulag jugoslavo que se dá a catarse que nos faz perceber quão intransigentes os idealistas também conseguem ser.

“Assina lá!”, rosno outra vez sem querer. Desta vez Vera ouve.
Encosta-se para trás e fita-me com um olhar demorado e sombrio. Acena com amargura e deceção, como se tivesse descoberto que, por baixo de todos os meus estratos imaculados, a traição me corresse no sangue. Como se sempre soubesse que no momento decisivo eu a atraiçoaria.
E lembro-me do que ela me disse quando eu era jovem: “Não deixarás que ninguém deturpe a minha história contra mim.”
Aquele momento...
Como é que daquelas feições familiares e amadas emerge de repente um rosto estranho. Inimigo. Porque nós estamos em guerra, eu e a minha avó. É óbvio. E ela adverte-me com o olhar para não ultrapassar a linha.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The older I get the more I contemplate what I can never know about past generations of my family. Even as I've tried to outline the facts and piece together story fragments, I know that there won't ever be a way to truly understand what my ancestors went through or why they made certain decisions. This is a subject Maria Stepanova rigorously contemplated as she sifted through family mementoes and records in her fascinating and extensive book “In Memory of Memory”. One of her conclusions seemed to be that whatever narrative we construct about the past doesn't necessarily give us any substantial insight or meaning. Equally, David Grossman rigorously questions the intention and value of documentation when it comes to examining family history in his compelling and moving puzzle box of a novel “More Than I Love My Life”.

The book opens with a narrator recounting the story of her parents and grandparents' lives on a kibbutz in the 1960s. It doesn't occur to this narrator to introduce herself as Gili until we're deep into the complicated relationships of her immediate family. She's enthralled with their stories (even though they occurred long before she was born) and they give the sense of having been told and retold so many times they've developed into a personal mythology. After the death of her grandfather Tuvia's first wife he married a Yugoslavian immigrant named Vera. Tuvia's son Rafael also falls for Vera's daughter Nina, but it's an unequal love affair as Nina is hampered by the violent circumstances of WWII and life under President Tito. Gili feels a deep anger towards her mostly-absent mother Nina as she's led a promiscuous life full of wanderlust. However, Gili is also aware that Nina's problems stem from something which happened when she was a girl – an unaddressed betrayal by Nina's mother Vera.

The second half of the novel takes place in 2008 when Gili and her father Rafael decide to record a documentary about Vera who has just turned 90 years old. Nina has returned for her mother's birthday and also reveals she's suffering from an illness which will cause her to prematurely lose her memory. In order to memorialise Vera's life and create an account which Nina's future self can use as a reference point, this family of four embark on a journey back to Vera's homeland as she recounts the horrors she endured during wartime. Many secrets and revelations emerge which lead to emotional confrontations.

Read my full review of More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman at LonesomeReader

[Sini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alle nieuwe boeken van de Israëlische schrijver David Grossman koop en lees ik direct. Zo ook "Het leven speelt met mij". En ik genoot zoals ik altijd van Grossman geniet. Al is "genieten" misschien een vreemd begrip bij een zo heftig boek als dit.

Het boek draait om een drie generaties lang doorwerkend trauma, dat doordesemd is van onverwoordbaar verraad en verschillende nauwelijks te bevatten vormen van leed. De zeer oude, joods- Joegoslavische Vera heeft kort na de wereldoorlog haar grote liefde Milos verloren door zelfmoord, en heeft jaren van verschrikking doorstaan in het Joegoslavische vernietigingskamp Goli Otok omdat ze weigerde haar liefde voor Milos te verloochenen. Die bijna onmogelijk dappere keuze heeft echter wel haar dochter Nina in zeer diep ongeluk gestort. En omdat Nina door dat ongeluk zelf alle houvast en richting kwijtraakte in haar leven, heeft zij op haar beurt nogal wat pijn teweeg gebracht bij de vergeefs op haar verliefde Rafi en bij hun beider dochter Gili, die ons het verhaal vertelt.

Hele werelden van meerdere generaties durende pijn staren ons dus aan in Grossmans boek. Hele werelden van verraad en schuld zien wij door Gili's ogen, en ook van onverzoenlijke tegenstelling: "Op Nina's lippen verscheen ineens een verschrikkelijk lachje. Het was me duidelijk dat het bijna een werktuiglijk lachje was, een soort tic die Vera bij Nina opriep door het naakte feit van haar bestaan, een doodskopachtige glimlach, die alle lof waarmee Vera was overstelpt tegelijkertijd bespotte en weerlegde, alsof hij een onzichtbare schande blootlegde[...] Ik wist dat deze glimlach van Nina geen vertaling had in enige taal die in het licht gesproken wordt ". Ook zien we samen met Gili hele werelden van onoplosbaarheid en verlies: "Na bijna twee jaar legde [Rafi] zich erbij neer dat hij Nina niet zou vinden en dat hij haar in feite had opgegeven, maar de omgang met de camera kon hij niet meer opgeven en ook - denk ik, of wéét ik het, niemand weet dat beter dan ik- het zoeken niet: de manier van kijken van iemand die zoekt wat hij is kwijtgeraakt ".

Dat kijken met de camera, met de blik van iemand die het kwijtgeraakte zoekt en BLIJFT zoeken, is ook wat Gili drijft. Samen met haar vader filmt zij monologen van Vera en van Nina, verhalen die - om redenen die ik niet zal verklappen- vooral zijn gericht tot de toekomstige Nina, die niets meer zal weten van de Nina van nu. In die verhalen wordt meer en meer onthuld wat Vera in Goli Otok heeft doorstaan, en wat de anderen deels door elkaars onbedoelde schuld hebben meegemaakt. Daarbij gaat het Gili "om de totaliteit van het gebeuren, ook dat buiten het beeldkader, en ook wat slechts bijna heeft plaatsgevonden maakt deel uit van de werkelijkheid". In de film, en in de aantekeningen die Gili al filmend maakt, schemert dan ook vaak iets door dat niet in film of woorden te vangen is: "Ze slikt. Een vage luchtspiegeling dreigt de zinnen te begoochelen. Als een barst die zich verwijdt in het beeld van de werkelijkheid". Bovendien zeggen vooral Vera en Nina dingen die ze nooit hebben gezegd of zelfs maar bewust hebben gedacht, zo krachtig is het medium van de film: "daar is het weer, het sterke moment van een documentaire: als de geïnterviewde, terwijl hij gefilmd wordt, het contract met de regisseur of met zichzelf wijzigt en zonder het van plan te zijn zichzelf plotseling echt geeft". En: "Telkens weer zag ik de geïnterviewde op dat kruispunt staan: het duistere geheim van zijn leven verklappen of zijn leugen vereeuwigen? Wonderlijk hoe velen besloten het geheim te verklappen- vooral mensen die op de rand van de dood stonden- alleen omdat ze voelden dat de waarheid ergens op de wereld moest worden bewaard".

"Het leven speelt met mij" staat vol fascinerende scenes vol pijn, scenes die je door alle pijnlijkheid soms nauwelijks kunt aanzien terwijl je ze toch ademloos doorleest. Dat komt vast door de dwingende stijl van Grossman. Of door de prachtige beelden waarin hij niet alleen Vera's ellende in Goli Otok laat zien, maar ook hoe haar verbeeldingskracht en haar volharding het voor even van die ellende winnen. Bovendien zijn alle hoofdpersonen ongelofelijk innemend en intrigerend, ondanks - of juist dankzij?- hun complexen en hun onverzoenlijke trauma's. Zulke complexe personages zo sympathiek en ontroerend neerzetten, dat kan Grossman volgens mij als maar weinig anderen. En ze zijn soms nog grappig ook.

Maar zelf was ik nog meer geïmponeerd door de wijze waarop Gili in haar film en haar aantekeningen steeds dieper probeert door te dringen tot de waarheid, hoe pijnlijk die ook is en hoe ongrijpbaar en onverzoenlijk die ook is. En nog imponerender vond ik hoe juist dat ongrijpbare en onverzoenlijke van die waarheid door haar (en dus door Grossman) gerespecteerd wordt. Want Gili maakt uiteindelijk geen film waarin alle trauma's zijn opgelost en alle geheimen en conflicten therapeutisch zijn uitgesproken. Integendeel, het boek eindigt in onopgeloste rouw om een verloren film. Maar ook met de troostende woorden "als er geen beelden zijn, dan zullen er woorden zijn". Dat zijn de woorden van "Het leven speelt met mij", de roman die de soms zo ongrijpbare en onverzoenlijke waarheid NIET versimpelt, en de rouw om het verlies NIET toedekt onder goedkope of makkelijke verzoeningen. De rouw en de traumatische treurnis worden niet versimpeld of toegedekt, maar in woorden geëxploreerd en gevat. Precies dat is de troost die deze woorden bieden. Want de onverzoenlijke en ongrijpbare waarheid is tenminste wel in al zijn onverzoenlijkheid uitgesproken. En alleen dat biedt de mogelijkheid om zich enigszins tot die waarheid te verhouden. Of om die in al zijn onacceptabele onverzoenlijkheid toch enigszins te accepteren. Hoe moeizaam en lastig dat ook is.

In zijn mooie nawoord vertelt Grossman ons nog dat deze roman is voortgekomen uit de levensgeschiedenis van Eva Panic Nahir, de in Joegoslavië ooit wereldberoemde vrouw die de wreedheden doorstond van 'Tito's goelags'. Grossman heeft echter met zijn fantasie duidelijk een eigen lading gegeven aan haar verhaal. Uiteraard kan ik niet beoordelen wat zij van deze roman gevonden zou hebben. Maar voor mij was het een mooie zoektocht in de onverwoordbare krochten van pijn, trauma en verlies. Een imponerende zoektocht bovendien, omdat hij met zulke volharding en met zoveel verbeeldingskracht wordt volgehouden, zonder te eindigen met een al te goedkoop en gelukkig einde.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, I'm sorry, this didn’t do it for me. As in the great To the End of the Land (a novel that I really loved), Grossman presents us with a portrait of a strong woman, in this case even three of them: grandmother Vera, daughter Nina and granddaughter Gili. All three are marked by life, each in a different way. The story is set in Israel (again in a kibbutz) and in the former Yugoslavia, and ultimately turns out to be related to dramatic events under the Tito regime, in the years after the Second World War. That seems strong enough material for a gripping story, but, as I said, it didn't convince. The three female characters seem too artificial to me, especially Nina, the 'hardest' of the three. Grossman's framing of the story as a kind of film project regularly is annoying. As other reviewers write, he should have made a play out of this. Of course, the broader background of this story is poignant enough: it illustrates once again the inhumanity of extreme ideologies, and the gruelling choices people are forced to make under such regimes.

[Fátima Linhares · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Coronel médico disse:"Preferes homem morto a menina viva? Que mãe és tu? Que mulher? Que pessoa?"
"E eu disse-lhe:"Eu já não sou mãe, nem mulher, nem pessoa. Não sou nada. Mãe, mulher e pessoa Novak Vera morreu. Vocês mataram sua razão de viver. Não assino. Façam que quiserem.""



"Sempre, todos os momentos em que não estiveste comigo, a única coisa que eu queria era estar contigo."
"Mesmo que eles me matassem, Nina, eu nunca lhes pediria..."
"Eu iria contigo até ao inferno", sussurra-lhe Nina da entrada da barraca, "só para estar contigo, todo o dia e toda a noite." "Só pensava nisso. Estar contigo, estar contigo."



Um romance inspirado na vida de Eva Panic Nahir, de quem nunca tinha ouvido falar.

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Grossman hem yazdıkları hem de savaşlar ve ülkesinin güttüğü yerleşimci politikaya karşı duruşu ile çok sevdiğim bir yazar. Genelde yazılarının odağında İsrail- Filistin çatışması olur ancak bu kitabında çok uzağa Tito rejimi, Goli Otok ve Yugoslav gizli polisinin karanlık tarihinden bir hikaye anlatıyor. Gerçi tam olarak hikaye de diyemeyiz çünkü gerçek bir hikayenin üzerine kurulu bir kurgu.

Yugoslavya’da Yahudi bir ailenin kızı olan Vera, sırp bir askere aşık olur ve evlenirler. Oldukça zor ve hastalıklı bir dönemi birlikte geçirmiş olsalar da Vera için hayatının en güzel yılları bu dönemdir. Ancak bir gün kocası Stalinist bir Rus ajanı olmakla suçlanıp Goli Otok’a gönderilir. Vera’dan da bir seçim yapması istenir. Üç kuşağın kadınlarına yayılan ve Sophie’nin Seçimi’nin Tito versiyonu gibi acımasız ve sarsıcı bir hikaye anlatıyor Grossman.

Yazarın tarzına alışkınsanız yine karmaşık bir öykünün ortasına düşeceğinizi zaten biliyorsunuz. Sinematik anlatımı da çok güçlü. Kitabı okuduktan sonra Eva- Panic- Nahir belgeselini izlediğimde, kitabı okurken gözümde ne canlandıysa onu buldum.

Kitaptaki hikaye konusunda çok fazla detaya girmeyeceğim çünkü hikaye boyunca aklınızda dönüp duran soruların cevabını adım adım almanız çok daha etkileyici olacaktır. Ancak David Grossman kitaplarından alıştığımız üzere yine savunma bakanlıkları tarafından el konulan hayatlar ve üç nesli paramparça eden kararlar romanın ana iskeleti konumunda. Zaten her kitabında bir “what if” senaryosunu aklınıza kazıması kendisinin imzası gibi.

Kitapta anlatılan hikaye biraz fazla daha doğrusu abartılmış gelebilir, gerçeği itiraf etmek gerekirse bir bölümdeki Gili hikayesinde ben de “ bu sefer yıldızımız barışmayacak galiba” diye düşündürdü. Ancak devamında bu durumu öyle pürüzsüz bir geçişle bağladı ki bütün “acaba”larımı sildi. Yine çok beğendiğim bir kitap oldu.
Son olarak, kitabın Türkçe çevirisi sanırım bu yılın sonuna kadar Siren Kitap tarafından yayınlanacak. Kitabın büyüsünü bozmamak adına, belgeseli kitaptan sonra okumanızı tavsiye ederim.

[Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a a wonderfully written family saga. One of best books I’ve read this year so far. It’s a complex book. It’s about human hearts. And the joys and tremendous losses and trauma at different ages and stages of life. It’s about how people respond when they are hurt/hurting. It speaks to how family members actions and choices affect each other. It attests to the power of love and kindness and resilience. And also how we can hurt those we love when we are hurting. It’s about the choices we make. Vera asks Gilli not to judge her. It’s about having a safe space to speak one’s truth and be heard. Sometimes it takes a whole life time to find your way to the place where one can do so.

The four main characters in this book are terrifically created. Some of the best I’ve met.

The book was so well written. David Grossman and Jennnifer Cohen (the translater) articulated things so well through this story. I do applaud their talents.

More than I Love My Life is based on a friend of the author’s life but fiction.

I chose to read this because i thought it was about the former Yugoslavia and Tito’s gulogs and on the 2022 Booker International longlist and written by Israeli David Grossman and Translated by Jennifer Cohen who I’ve wanted to read for a while.

After note: I read GR friend Tundra’s terrific review of this book recently. She had posted a video of Goli Otok in her review. It’s the prison -gulag that Tito sent prisoners to. Our main character was there for a while.Tundra said it was ok that I could post video here also. So others can look at it too. Much thx to her.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp2Jdsg...

[Alma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“O que se pode dizer quando não há nada a fazer?”

“Não há dúvida de que nós damos um sentido novo ao conceito de «família».”

“Da figura de potro que teve até uma idade bastante avançada, até há pelo menos cinco anos, na última vez que a vi, Nina saltou diretamente para um começo de declínio, não exagero, sem se deter numa feminilidade madura, plena. Sem se deter na vida.”

“A tristeza está lá sempre, é a cor de base dos olhos dela.”

“Calou-se, deixando que o passado ressurgisse e os submergisse aos dois, para depois se retirar e voltar para lugares suportáveis.”

“Ele murmura algo sobre as perguntas que guardamos dentro de nós durante anos até já não sermos capazes de as fazer.”

“Ela é o meu grão de terra.
O nosso.”

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness, my goodness. This one did it for me. What a story, what a writer. Okay, now I’m itching to get to “A Horse Walks into a Bar,” which I’ve had for years. This novel went to some dark places I wasn’t expecting; And some emotionally gruelling places; And some devastatingly heartbreaking places.

I wouldn’t say it is a flawless book (structure can feel forced at times), but the ambition is in full force here. Due to its never-ending change in structure, this book always kept me on my toes.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really thought I was headed for the full 5* stars till the last 20-25%. The wheels fell off for me when we got to the island.
Prior to that engrossing and well written.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heartbreaking book that brings us three generations of a family most living on a kibbutz, struggling every day, drowning in the tributaries that have broken off from an devastating huge original river of trauma. That original river flows from Vera (who is a fictionalized version of a real person with whom Grossman had a long friendship and who asked him to write the book of her story but make it fiction) who was held in Tito's camps under the most horrifying of conditions accused of being a Russian agent. There is a lot that needs to be said to explain why all this matters and how it impacts others, but that is the story so I am not going to discuss it here. All I will say is that Vera made many decisions which sprang from love but which destroyed her daughter Nina, which in turn led to a life of loss for the man who loved her daughter and a life of disaffection for their daughter, Gili. When Nina returns to the kibbutz (for reasons I won't reveal) after having abandoned her husband and daughter many years ago she asks that a film be made about the family's story (the abandoned husband had, in the past, been a filmmaker, and the daughter had, also in the past, worked in film.) Can the making of that film help all reconcile their traumas or maybe provide a path forward, or will it be the thing that finally destroys their tenuous hold on life? Read and see. The book is fascinating, beautifully crafted and told with great compassion (as one expects from David Grossman) and it illuminates a historical moment many people are unfamiliar with while telling us things both beautiful and not beautiful about love.

There are a couple clunky parts of this that kept it from being a 5-star read. I feel the author should have spent more time talking about what happened to Nina while her mother was in the camp, and it should have been addressed earlier. Gili's relationship with her husband is introduced, but it just kind of hangs there -- she never really seems to think much about her husband beyond big existential issues regarding their relationship, and that is weird. Gili's mental health struggles are dropped on the reader like a bomb, and the evolution of her life, her ups and downs are missing. Either these things should have been left out, or more provided. Overall, though these were frustrating issues, they did not blunt the books impact. I would give this a 4.5 if possible.

[Milly Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

No podría explicarles en palabras lo que es este libro. Hay que leerlo para sentirlo, para llorarlo, para amarlo.
Una historia verdadera contada al estilo Grossman en su más complejo y rico lenguaje.
Interrogantes que no se podrán entender y amores que no se podrán creer.
Injusticia y dolor a la par con las relaciones familiares que como siempre, son complicadas y profundas. En un mundo donde los valores ganan y los silencios lastiman.
No cabe duda qué hay genios de las palabras y Grossman es uno de ellos. Increíble como va soltando cabos y se van descubriendo los secretos.
Es y seguirá siendo de mis autores favoritos.

[Ratko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Прича је свакако занимљива, међутим никако ми не лежи овакав стил писања. Нисам никако могао да се вежем са ликовима, било ми је чак досадно у неким деловима, понегде врло натегнуто и извештачено, као да гледам/слушам дијалоге из неког лошег холивудског филма. Разочарао сам се, с обзиром да је роман најављиван на сва звона, а и с обзиром на значај теме.
Једино бих волео да нађем тај документарац који је Киш снимао о Еви Панић Нахир.

[Marta Silva]

DNF
Com muita pena minha, nem a narrativa nem as personagens me fizeram ficar envolvida nesta leitura.

[Sandra Deaconu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deși nu mi-a plăcut niciun personaj, nu m-am regăsit în niciuna dintre alegerile lor și aș fi vrut mai multă profunzime în scriitură decât atâtea descrieri despre întâmplări banale, indiferent cât de limpede și succint a fost stilul lui Grossman, ,,De mine viața și-a tot râs'' a avut ceva blând și cald, care m-a încântat. Este portretul unei furii, care erodează tot din sufletul celor care o poartă, al durerii care se transmite ca o moștenire ironică de-a lungul generațiilor și al relațiilor inimaginabil de complicate dintre oameni. Nu a fost o lectură care să îmi răscolească sufletul, așa cum am sperat, dar sigur voi mai căuta alte titluri de-ale autorului, pentru că, pur și simplu, are acel ceva care mă cheamă. Recenzia aici: https://bit.ly/3T8FVqu.

,,Până azi știu să mă gândesc împreună cu tine, și atât de profund sunt cu tine, încât chiar după cincizeci și șapte de ani sunt tot timpul cu lacrimi închise în mine fiindcă te-ai dus.''

[Monica Cabral · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta é a história de três gerações de mulheres que sofreram com o abandono.
Vera, que após a morte do marido Milosz, foi deportada para o Campo de Reeducação na ilha de Goli Otok, um dos Gulags de Josip Tito na Jugoslávia,  abandonou Nina com apenas seis anos.
Nina, que viveu sempre com os fantasmas do passado e com a dor extrema de ser abandonada pela mãe,  nunca se prendeu a nenhum lugar nem a ninguém,  muito menos a Guili a filha que também abandonou aos três anos e que nunca lhe perdoou os anos de ausência e indiferença.
No dia dos 90 anos de Vera estas três mulheres reencontram-se e a pedido de Nina, embarcam numa viagem ao passado: Nina quer que a mãe lhe conte toda a verdade sobre o pai e sobre os três anos que ela passou em Goli Otok. Na companhia de Rafael,  pai de Giuli, partem para os Balcãs,  onde a viagem vai ser filmada para mais tarde ficar como um documento para a família,  pois foram estes três horríveis anos de trabalhos forçados e torturas que mudaram o futuro destas três mulheres.
Este é um livro brilhantemente escrito que nos mostra com uma clareza espantosa a dura relação que por vezes existe entre pais e filhos, com a sua escrita crua e realista, David Grossman consegue transmitir com um realismo e nitidez impressionantes a personalidade de cada personagem, a descrição de cada local e todo o sofrimento fisico e psicológico de Vera no Campo.
A história de Vera foi inspirada na vida de Eva Panić Nahir que se tornou um símbolo de coragem quase sobre-humano por ter sobrevivido a Goli Otok.
Só David Grossman podia contar uma história dura como esta sem a fazer parecer banal e só mais uma história de sobrevivência.

[João Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Quando descemos da montanha, apavorados e agarrados uns aos outros, eu já sabia que não aceitaria tudo o que fizemos na viagem ficasse nas profundezas do mar. Mais tarde, durante anos, cada vez que a tristeza pelo meu filme perdido me assaltava, dizia para mim, se não há imagens, haverá palavras.
Mas passaram anos até que fui capaz de começar a escrever.
Entretanto aconteceram coisas que preencheram a minha vida.
Demos à pequenina o nome de Nina. Tem cinco anos e meio.
Ela é o meu grão de terra.
O nosso.” (Pág. 322)

”A Vida Brinca Comigo” é um excelente romance, uma leitura desafiante página a página, sobretudo, pela constante alternância narrativa entre o passado e o presente.
As personagens femininas - Vera, Nina e Guili - são três mulheres que buscam a verdade, remexendo memórias dolorosas, dilemas existenciais delimitados por sentimentos ambíguos. Cada personagem carrega em si fragilidade e coragem, dor e alegria, condenação e perdão, ódio e amor, traição e fidelidade.
Com a sua habitual mestria narrativa David Grossman (n. 1954) consegue com inegável eficácia e excepcional carinho contar as relações conflituosas das diferentes personagens, num confronto entre as memórias e as omissões do passado que abriram feridas que parecem impossíveis de sarar.
Em ”A Vida Brinca Comigo” prosperam os contrastes em que as diferentes dicotomias são exemplarmente representadas pelos diálogos, pelas metáforas e pelas analogias que David Grossman nos apresenta com uma crueldade e uma argúcia extremamente convincente.
Uma livro a ler...

[Amina Hujdur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roman koji mi je bio od samog izlaska na listi želja. Tema Golog otoka, kao najveće mrlje socijalizma i Titove vladavine me uvijek intrigirala i zanimala.
Grossman tematizira priču Eve Panić Nahir, žene koja je, skupa sa suprugom Radom Panićem, bila gorljiva partizanka, poslije rata bili su angažirani komunisti. No, 1950-ih Rade Panić je optužen da je sovjetski špijun, a njegova udovica Eva odvedena na Goli otok. O Evi Panić je Danilo Kiš napravio seriju emisija u kojima je govorila o strahotama Golog otoka, njezino svjedočanstvo bilo je jedno od prvih javnih, u kojima je široj publici ispričana dotad zataškavana priča o Golom otoku.
U jednom dijelu se čak kaže, da su zatvorenice koje su boravile u Aušvicu pričale da je na Golom gore, su u Aušvicu znale ko im je neprijatelj, a na Golom su im svi bili neprijatelji.
U knjizi se Grossman bavi s tri ženska lika: bivšom zatočenicom Golog otoka, njezinom kćeri i njezinom unukom.
Kad tri žene naposljetku iz Izraela dođu posjetiti Goli otok, svaka od njih doživi neku vrstu svoje katarze. Kako u romanu kaže unuka:
“To je otok... na kojem se događao značajan dio mog djetinjstva i mladosti, premda na njega nikad nisam nogom kročila, i tamo će završiti naše putovanje, a ja ću možda opet biti ono što jesam, a ne hologram kaosa...”.
Grossmanov je roman, među ostalim, i moćna studija obitelji, priča o transgeneracijskom prijenosu trauma.
Ako vas zanimaju porodične priče, tema Golog otoka, detrminiranost likova djetinjstvom, ovaj roman stabite na listu želja.