(reviewed by JD Jung)
“She turns her giving of love available to transact with, as a form of punishment, a torment, an affliction, an act of revenge. She replays overtures of love with suffering and pain.”
So why is writer Nathan Falk so obsessed with the icy, callous but beautiful Lena? She’s also an author, but his political opposite: a Ukrainian Jew, anti-Israel, and pro-Russian. She’s also too young for him, married, and is involved with another lover.
Nathan in turn served in the Israeli military though born in New York. He writes Holocaust-themed novels, has ten published books and is paid well to speak, especially in Europe. A son of a Holocaust survivor, he felt abandoned by his mother growing up and anticipates and dreads a “Holocaust 2.0.” Lena finds this ridiculous.
We follow Nathan as he goes about his daily life, speaking in literary circles, meeting other women all the while obsessing over Lena. However, this emotional whirlwind does manage to handicap him, as he loses interest in his work and other aspects of his life.
Though I couldn’t relate to Nathan’s actions, I was still intrigued by his thoughts and how his family’s past and his people’s history could damage him so severely. Both Nathan and Lena possess deep emotional scars and exhibit self-destructive behavior in different ways. In fact you can see how this dichotomy affects the other supporting characters as well.
Nathan continually gives the reader insight into possible origins of his emotional state. One example is “Israelis begin to regard the outer dark beyond the border as an impenetrable black unknown in with lurks horrors beyond imagining. They begin to feel claustrophobic, depressed, dejected, demoralized –their tiny land of liberation becomes a prison fraught with threat. Something like the way I now felt cohabitating with Lena.”
What makes this well-written short novel so thought-provoking is that there is a lot left to the reader to process on not only a personal level, but a global one as well.
