The story of Aunt Shlomzion the great

by Yoram Kaniuk

English, Hebrew (translation)

Genres: Israel

171 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Yoram Kaniuk (Hebrew: יורם קניוק) was an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theater critic.

Winner of the Bialik Prize for Children's Literature (1991).

Reviews

[Robin K · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange little book about a hateful woman, told by her nephew who was trying to figure her out. The poetic language, and perhaps the translation from Hebrew, made the text a bit difficult for me to get through. Also, there is something about Israeli books that makes me feel like I’m missing symbolism or an understanding of history, which would make this book more impactful. So all that results in this three star rating.

[Laura Boudreau · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get through this book. The writing style was all over the place, hard to define the characters, none of whom were particularly likeable.

[Oriyah N · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the kind of book I couldn't put down, but only because I wanted to be done with it already. It was painful. I get what the author was trying to do, and admire the aim, but it fell really short in my opinion. It was also hard to keep many of the characters straight (too many similar names, a pet-peeve of mine in literature) and no one was really likeable enough or detestable enough for me to care about what happened to them. Sure, there were a few entertaining scenes, and I was impressed with some of the linguistic complexity, but the scenes that made be inwardly chuckle were few and far between, and far outweighed by the ones that made me want to rip my skin off just to escape the tedium, and the linguistic admiration was more based on my knowledge of the short-range of the Hebrew language and its lack of linguistic diversity as opposed to actual enjoyment. Like, wow, that was a lot of impressively dredged-up tedium.

The hot-pink and orange cover suggested something more interesting than this aiming-to-be-colorful-but-far-too-bland work.