“To the End of the Land” is “an act of choosing life”

I feel lost knowing that tonight I won’t be home reading David Grossman’s “To the End of the Land”. It’s been a long relationship. A 575-page relationship. I’ve read it slowly, taken some breaks for mandatory reading, and enjoyed savouring every page of the thoughtful, perceptive and sensitive account of a family and a threesome friendship in Israel where war and hatred are the backdrop to lives which can’t quite be normal.

Ora is the woman caught between trying to raise her family well and ethically, and war in which her sons and lovers participate. We learn about her and her family’s life as she takes a walk with an old friend and lover who suffers from post-traumatic stress. The walk is intended to take her away from her home to avoid a knock at the door – her son is willingly participating in an operation and that midnight knock to announce a death she believes is inevitable. Running away is her attempt to avoid, and by avoiding and telling Avram the story of her family, she believes she might prevent “it” from happening.

Read The New Yorker’s interview/review here. And an excerpt here.

But really you need to read the book.