Total Page : 560
Publisher : Mariner Books
Publication Date : 2005 11 01
>> All Oz all the time
A brilliantly written autobiography A Tale of Love and Darkness is sometimes gorgeously descriptive witty with beautifully rounded and developed characters At times however it s a hard slog
It s amazing how Oz somehow managed to know and interact with so many of the fathers and mothers of the State of Israel The history alone makes this a powerful read
>> A story of sorrow told in beautiful joyous prose
There are 54 reviewers who recorded their thoughts before mine So my review includes some comments on those reviews
I found the book to be very fascinating because I am very curious about Jews as people and Israel as a country Amos Oz has gone through events that few people go through in their life the most difficult one is his mother s suicide The story is told in a radiating style with his mother s suicide being the focus Events either flow towards it or away from it It is not easy to tell such a difficult painful story Amos Oz tells it very effectively and virtually takes you into his life His prose is so beautiful He is also very humorous
As many commented this book is not completely autobiographical A bulk of it is on his childhood years He was in kibbutz for nearly 35 years starting from when he was nearly 15 but less than one third of the book is devoted to it While so much detail is shared with readers about his reading habits the people influenced him etc the life changing decision he made with respect to joining kibbutz is told as if he woke up one day and decided to do it There is no detail on how he found out about it what he thought about it initially and how he ultimately came up with the conviction
Someone has mentioned that there are nothing but street names in the first 70 pages and the book was so boring they could not continue I feel sorry for the person because he missed the best parts of the book Even in the first 70 pages there are a number of events of interest In fact the most poetical paragraph in the book is in the first 70 pages which describes how his mother acted in the presence of a famous writer Agnon
>> Long Winded But Enjoyable
Amos Oz is one of Israel s best known novelists some label him as Israel s number one Any new book by Oz gets the immediate attention of everyone gets translated to several languages and hits the no 1 spot in the bestsellers list almost immediately Indeed Oz has become an icon in Israel to whom many turn to not only to discuss literary matters but also get his opinion on politics society and life in general As my wife says he has become a sacred cow elevated to a status where it has become extremely difficult for any critic to harm sales of his books in any significant way
I read A Tale of Love and Darkness in Hebrew during my trip in New Zealand and it accompanied me throughout the journey It is an autobiography that Oz started writing shortly after he turned 60 at the end of the previous century It tells mainly the story of his childhood in Jerusalem growing up during the time Israel was being formed Oz was 9 when Israel gained independence Although the book covers many aspects of his life the one overriding theme surfacing over and over again is the suicide of his mother when he was 12 This event shaped Oz s life and led to the abrupt change he embarked upon two years later the move from the book centric scholarly life of his father in Jerusalem to the freedom and agricultural life of Kibbutz Hulda
Oz s writing is at times long winded and pompous Even daily mundane events are recounted in excruciating detail that sometimes make the reader wonder whether they indeed made such an impact on his life to deserve such attention Despite this Oz manages to combine tragedy and comedy in his family s saga and his occasional self effacing manner make the reader forgive him for his long windedness Throughout the book the leading figures of Israel as a young nation pop up Bialik Tchernikhowsky Agnon Ben Gurion and Yadin all came and went in Oz s childhood
The book is more of a memoir than an autobiography The storyline is not linear and Oz repeats some events several times If we ignore the fact that Oz wrote this book and thus remove the sacred cow factor the book is an enjoyable read and contributes to the understanding of how Ashkenazi Jews coped with their new life in the Middle East
