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To the End of the Land David Grossman Jessica Cohen 9780307592972 Books

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To the End of the Land David Grossman Jessica Cohen 9780307592972 Books

To End of the Land takes us on an extended backpack across the Israeli landscape. As we accompany Ora, her lifelong friend and sometimes lover, Avram, and a stray dog that adopts them, we breathe the air and tread the soil of their troubled homeland. There are some among us for whom a two week stroll through the wilderness--cut off from the world of current events, cell phones and the comforts of home-- would be the most wonderful of luxuries. And then there are those who would view this same adventure as nothing less than an interminable nightmare to be avoided at all cost. Likewise there are those who will find this novel, devoid of the comforts of plot and action, interminable and discomforting. And then there will be others, like myself, who will find it a delicious treat--a long slow suck to be savored from the first sentence to the last. To the End of the Land, to be sure, is a long, meandering tale in which strikingly little happens. Like a wilderness trek, destination for Grossman is beside the point--it's the journey itself, and what you notice, and what you think about, along the way, which is the objective. Emotions, the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and the minutiae of daily life are what interests Grossman, not happenings--or at least not happenings that aren't filtered first through the distorting lens of emotion.

For 650 pages Grossman meanders slowly through the inner life of his main character. As Ora hikes up and down, over, and around the mountains of northern Israel, we become entangled in her complex emotional life. Even more than Avram, who is privy only to her spoken words, we are her confidants as she contemplates her relationships with her sons and lovers. By the time we reach the end of the novel we know more about Ora, what she thinks about, and what she feels, than we do about even our most intimate associates. And yet, there is nothing extraordinary or even particularly compelling about her. Neurotic, annoying, malignantly insecure, self-centered, and bereft of insight and perspective, Ora's failings, obsessions and vulnerabilities are the substance of this psychological novel. Why should the inner life of this imperfect heroine interest us? For many it won't, but for me, it was precisely Ora's flaws that made her so interesting, so real, so Human, and in the end so appealing. For this reader at least, Human weakness is ever so much more interesting than its opposite.

To wander so deeply into the emotional wilderness of a female character, especially one as flawed as Ora, is dangerous terrain for a male author. With his preoccupation with emotional nuance and interpersonal detail, Grossman writes with a feminine sensibility that, depending on one's perspective, the reader will find either courageous or audacious. As a male reader, I am perhaps a suspect judge, but I felt that, after my walk with Ora, I not only understand her, but had new insights into the flesh and blood women in my own life.

While never polemical, To the End of the Land is without a question a political novel. Israeli politics are more than a backdrop; they are the novel's subject. Curiously, Grossman has chosen to show us Israel through the eyes of a character for whom politics is at best a peripheral concern. Ora certainly doesn't dwell much on geo-political questions except where they affect her directly. We never learn what her views are--most likely they are too nebulous to be put into words. Ora is not ignorant, she is all too aware of how political forces beyond her control have shaped her life. But for her it is all an intrusion; she would prefer to be left alone. As much as she is a woman, mother, wife and lover, Ora is an Israeli--and for Israelis escaping from politics is more or less impossible. Ora is as much a part of the land she is walking through as the stones she steps over. She can no more escape political realities than she can learn to fly. In a sense she is Israel. Her imperfections and her pain echo those of her country. Like Israel, Ora's troubles are largely of her own making. And like Israel, the degree to which we embrace her has to do with our willingness to forgive her her many mistakes. Ora senses the contradictions, suffers the guilt, and struggles to make sense of the tragedy playing out in her homeland, and yet she doesn't quite have the insight to put it all together into a coherent picture. This, too, echoes her more personal struggle to understand herself--she see the pieces but can't quite put them together. This artful weaving together of the political and the personal is perhaps the novel's greatest strength.

Like its main character, the novel has its imperfections. Where the novel is weakest is when it makes forays away from Ora's inner life into the minds of the other characters. The novel would feel less unbounded if told exclusively from Ora's perspective. We should only know what Ora knows and feel what Ora feels. At times, Grossman seems torn between wanting to follow this artistic constraint and his desire to show us things beyond Ora's periphery. He attempts to resolve this by having her know things that seem improbable. The long section when Ora relates the story of Ilan's attempted rescue of Avram feels contrived because it is unbelievable that she could relate this story with such detail having heard it only once over twenty years ago. In this section the author has strayed from Ora's inner life into Ilan's, and this lack of artistic discipline weakens the novel. I also think that, given the breadth of detail about Ora's relationship with her sons and their fathers, the lack of detail about her family of origin is wanting. I can't help but think that if I knew more about her past I might understand her better. It seems likely that during her long introspective trek she would have reflected on the dynamics of the home she grew up in. However, these flaws are minor, compared to the novel's strengths. What Grossman has pulled off is rare in contemporary literature: a novel that works on both a microcosmic, personal level and a macrocosmic, societal level. Its scope is much broader than much of contemporary literature and yet he does this without sacrificing the intimate. I appreciated its slow, meticulous cadence and highly recommend this worthy read.


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To the End of the Land David Grossman Jessica Cohen 9780307592972 Books Reviews

Brief summary and review, no spoilers.

A young Israeli soldier named Ofer has just finished his tour of duty, and his relieved mother Ora has planned a celebratory hiking tour in the Galilee. But when Ora finds out that Ofer has reenlisted, she panics and becomes convinced he will die. She then decides to start walking and take that journey to the Galilee because she believes that if she is not home with the notifiers arrive, she can insure that Ofer won't die. (The notifiers are the people who inform families that their loved ones have died.)

Ora goes on this journey with Avram, Ofer's broken-down reclusive father. Avram suffered horrible injury when he served with the army during the Yom Kippur War years earlier. He has never met his son. Although he is a shadow of his former self and reluctant to take this journey with Ora, he does so and Ora tells him all about their son and helps bring Avram back to the world. It is through this journey and Ora's narration that we find out about the history of these characters, and how war has impacted their lives.

Other important characters include Ora's estranged husband Ilan, with whom she had a child named Adam. Ora and Ilan and Avram were childhood friends, and we meet them all at the start of this book as they are convalescing at a hospital. We know early on that the three formed a love triangle, and by the end of the story we learn what happened.

There are many reasons to recommend this book. There are wonderful passages with clever and witty dialogue that make us smile, even in the midst of tragedy. We also become intimately aware of what life is like in modern-day Israel, and how the constant strife and tension cause suspicion and hatred among those who would otherwise be friends.

At the same time, this was not a quick read for me, by any means. In fact this was a very slow-go for me, and there were times when I put the book down I was not all that anxious to pick it up again. If you are looking for a quick page-turner, this is not it.

Still, recommended for the author's skill and ability to draw us into this world, and for writing a contemporary anti-war novel that will stay with you for a long time.
An Israeli woman has flashbacks of her traumatic childhood during one of Israel's wars. Now her soldier son is about to see action in a new war. Her ex-husband and close friend also lived through the previous war and were affected in various ways, and we get to know their stories too. It's as if everyone in the country is suffering from their own PTSD; a sense of unease and dread pervades the atmosphere. The author brilliantly express the woman's inmost thoughts and fears. His writing style is lyrical and elegiac. Minor characters, such as a Palestinian taxi driver and a Hasidic caretaker of homeless people, are fully filled-out and portrayed sympathetically.
This is an extraordinarily powerful novel about families, war, and what happens when families and war are inextricably intertwined. I can't really say that I "enjoyed" ithis novel, but I found it engrossing and compelling, and I continue to think about the issues it explores. it is often painful, sometimes distressing, and at times (especially when the heroine is on a real tear) claustrophobic -- I listened to the book, and at times I wanted to pull out the earbuds and get away from the world Grossman creates. But I kept listening. I really couldn't have stopped, I cared so much about the characters, and I wanted to find out what happened next -- or more accurately what would next be revealed. Ex post, I am very glad to have read the book, and will recommend it strongly to friends and relations. It does what literature is supposed to do put the reader in someone else's skin. And it is also, for a non-Israeli reader, very illuminating about what it means to be Israeli. Things from the inside are often far more complicated than they look from outside, and I learned a lot about the inside from this novel.
To End of the Land takes us on an extended backpack across the Israeli landscape. As we accompany Ora, her lifelong friend and sometimes lover, Avram, and a stray dog that adopts them, we breathe the air and tread the soil of their troubled homeland. There are some among us for whom a two week stroll through the wilderness--cut off from the world of current events, cell phones and the comforts of home-- would be the most wonderful of luxuries. And then there are those who would view this same adventure as nothing less than an interminable nightmare to be avoided at all cost. Likewise there are those who will find this novel, devoid of the comforts of plot and action, interminable and discomforting. And then there will be others, like myself, who will find it a delicious treat--a long slow suck to be savored from the first sentence to the last. To the End of the Land, to be sure, is a long, meandering tale in which strikingly little happens. Like a wilderness trek, destination for Grossman is beside the point--it's the journey itself, and what you notice, and what you think about, along the way, which is the objective. Emotions, the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and the minutiae of daily life are what interests Grossman, not happenings--or at least not happenings that aren't filtered first through the distorting lens of emotion.

For 650 pages Grossman meanders slowly through the inner life of his main character. As Ora hikes up and down, over, and around the mountains of northern Israel, we become entangled in her complex emotional life. Even more than Avram, who is privy only to her spoken words, we are her confidants as she contemplates her relationships with her sons and lovers. By the time we reach the end of the novel we know more about Ora, what she thinks about, and what she feels, than we do about even our most intimate associates. And yet, there is nothing extraordinary or even particularly compelling about her. Neurotic, annoying, malignantly insecure, self-centered, and bereft of insight and perspective, Ora's failings, obsessions and vulnerabilities are the substance of this psychological novel. Why should the inner life of this imperfect heroine interest us? For many it won't, but for me, it was precisely Ora's flaws that made her so interesting, so real, so Human, and in the end so appealing. For this reader at least, Human weakness is ever so much more interesting than its opposite.

To wander so deeply into the emotional wilderness of a female character, especially one as flawed as Ora, is dangerous terrain for a male author. With his preoccupation with emotional nuance and interpersonal detail, Grossman writes with a feminine sensibility that, depending on one's perspective, the reader will find either courageous or audacious. As a male reader, I am perhaps a suspect judge, but I felt that, after my walk with Ora, I not only understand her, but had new insights into the flesh and blood women in my own life.

While never polemical, To the End of the Land is without a question a political novel. Israeli politics are more than a backdrop; they are the novel's subject. Curiously, Grossman has chosen to show us Israel through the eyes of a character for whom politics is at best a peripheral concern. Ora certainly doesn't dwell much on geo-political questions except where they affect her directly. We never learn what her views are--most likely they are too nebulous to be put into words. Ora is not ignorant, she is all too aware of how political forces beyond her control have shaped her life. But for her it is all an intrusion; she would prefer to be left alone. As much as she is a woman, mother, wife and lover, Ora is an Israeli--and for Israelis escaping from politics is more or less impossible. Ora is as much a part of the land she is walking through as the stones she steps over. She can no more escape political realities than she can learn to fly. In a sense she is Israel. Her imperfections and her pain echo those of her country. Like Israel, Ora's troubles are largely of her own making. And like Israel, the degree to which we embrace her has to do with our willingness to forgive her her many mistakes. Ora senses the contradictions, suffers the guilt, and struggles to make sense of the tragedy playing out in her homeland, and yet she doesn't quite have the insight to put it all together into a coherent picture. This, too, echoes her more personal struggle to understand herself--she see the pieces but can't quite put them together. This artful weaving together of the political and the personal is perhaps the novel's greatest strength.

Like its main character, the novel has its imperfections. Where the novel is weakest is when it makes forays away from Ora's inner life into the minds of the other characters. The novel would feel less unbounded if told exclusively from Ora's perspective. We should only know what Ora knows and feel what Ora feels. At times, Grossman seems torn between wanting to follow this artistic constraint and his desire to show us things beyond Ora's periphery. He attempts to resolve this by having her know things that seem improbable. The long section when Ora relates the story of Ilan's attempted rescue of Avram feels contrived because it is unbelievable that she could relate this story with such detail having heard it only once over twenty years ago. In this section the author has strayed from Ora's inner life into Ilan's, and this lack of artistic discipline weakens the novel. I also think that, given the breadth of detail about Ora's relationship with her sons and their fathers, the lack of detail about her family of origin is wanting. I can't help but think that if I knew more about her past I might understand her better. It seems likely that during her long introspective trek she would have reflected on the dynamics of the home she grew up in. However, these flaws are minor, compared to the novel's strengths. What Grossman has pulled off is rare in contemporary literature a novel that works on both a microcosmic, personal level and a macrocosmic, societal level. Its scope is much broader than much of contemporary literature and yet he does this without sacrificing the intimate. I appreciated its slow, meticulous cadence and highly recommend this worthy read.