Deborah’s Reviews > גלבי > Status Update

I continue to enjoy the author's long scenes with detailed descriptions of the setting and the people's interactions. How in 1963 "Isaac" behaved with his adoptive parents (did he know?), and the encounter with Zohara and Yoav - another species of Jew whom he resembles! I'm having difficulty finishing this book because I feel attached to the characters.

It's puzzling why I was unmoved by Sara's story of her barracks-mate Inge and the Kapo. Too similar to so many others I've read (even with illustrations by Ella Liebermann-Shiber or Naomi Judkowski)? Sara's flat, rushed delivery like the way she always talks? I'm inclined to think the latter. If so, need to consider its effect on Adiva who's hearing it for the first time (about the mystery of the bread ritual).

I love how the author describes a scene full of people and their interactions while describing the setting with a smattering of details, much as we see our surroundings in more or less detail. The childhood visit to the cinema was most moving for the total inclusion Sara Carmeli extends to her daughter's best friend - and the surprise meeting with the younger Yigal and how compassionately he behaved.

The long scene of the four siblings without their parents, all trying to cope with the crisis of Z's lice infestation and needing her hair sheared off before she can go back to school - so much feeling of their intentions, their limitations, their helplessness as their mother is off on her interminable searches. Makes me feel the drama in which every child, every person grows up.

Yigal tells his Holocaust story - arresting thought that in the year I came to the country, people you'd meet who were born just before or during the war very likely went through it in Europe and lost family, which is his case. And again a story with details I would swear I've never encountered before in quite this way. They have these experiences in their past like I have - what, my Brooklyn or Rockaway childhood?

The scene of Adiva's family in the airport arrivals hall was like a stage play with each character in his or her role - it took me a while to get through it but that reflects the event's seemingly interminable nature. Contrast with Zohara leaving Rambam's maternity ward with the uniformed Yair after she gave birth to their son - the painful indignities of her situation rang true and so sad.

The wedding scene at kibbutz (Hulata) was devastatingly on target for the kibbutz of the early 80s (another of which I joined about then, after having experienced an Artzi kibbutz in the mid-'70s). Vivid descriptions, and sympathies to match. Would a similar young couple today find a different, more hopeful way to resolve an unplanned pregnancy so early in their relationship? I would hope so.

So far the most impressive passage: the interactions between the "obsessive, controlling" (author's later description) Auschwitz-survivor mother and her spirited, socially-integrated sabra son who cheerfully challenges her restrictions, e.g. using the carefully maintained porch room for summer suppers rather than the stifling interior - and the mother's hysterical, exaggerated response. And where each ends up.

I'm really impressed (contrary to the insulting reviewer in my daily paper the weekend before last) by the author's delicate treatment of interior monologue, recollections, and nuanced descriptions of characters' interactions. They stand as societal-historical "types" and as individuals. I'm reading slowly (partly as it's an acquired language for me) and have a sense of immediacy as though a spectator in each scene.

Ch. 4 about the child A. seeking the story behind "the blue numbers" that don't wash off in the shower - totally opened my eyes about what I hadn't understood from other reading: till May 1960 (a camp survivor's testimony published in Davar) and then the Eichmann trial (1961) - there was NO public discussion of the Holocaust in Israel! This gives context for understand other societal dynamics of which I've heard.