The Seven Good Years

Starred review from April 20, 2015
In this slim, episodic set of recollections, acclaimed Israeli fiction writer Keret (The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God) covers the span between the birth of his son and the death of his father. In spare, wry prose, he recounts his child’s birth, the same day as a terrorist attack, and sums up the violent underpinnings of current Israeli life when he tells a disappointed journalist that “the attacks are always the same. What can you say about an explosion and senseless death?” This apolitical, irreligious, and wry fatalism recalls a great deal of Jewish humor, a meditation on the absurd and vital. The initial courtship of Keret’s parents, both Holocaust survivors, is lovingly described with a thirst for life that reflects the vitality of Israel’s earliest decades. Keret thinks and feels deeply, but he makes heavy points with a light touch, describing a childhood friend as having “the smiling but tough expression of an aging child who had already learned a thing or two about this stupid world.” While the short chapters move in linear fashion, each stands firmly on its own.. Without overplaying any single aspect of a complicated life in complicated times in a complicated place, Keret’s lovely memoir retains its essential human warmth, demonstrating that with memoirs, less can often be more.

April 15, 2015
A writer's life amid tremors of war. In his debut book of nonfiction, Israeli writer Keret (Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, 2012, etc.) chronicles seven years bracketed by two momentous events: the birth of his son, Lev, and his father's death from cancer. The author represents each year with a handful of musings, some serious, others frothy. He recounts an absurd conversation with a telemarketer, for example; silly dedications he makes up during Hebrew Book Week; growing a mustache as a birthday present for his son; his lackluster efforts to exercise; and Lev's many cute remarks. The best pieces are quietly moving. After a neighbor asked him if he had considered whether his son, then 3, would join the army, Keret was surprised that his wife had already made her decision. "I don't want him to go into the army," she announced. Would she rather have other people's children fight instead? Keret asked heatedly. "I'm saying that we could have reached a peaceful solution a long time ago, and we still can," she replied, but not if Israeli leaders "know that most people are like you: they won't hesitate to put their children's lives into the government's irresponsible hands." One day as they were driving, an air-raid siren blared. Lev refused to lie down on the side of the road until Keret devised a game of "Pastrami Sandwich," with he and his wife as the two slices of bread and Lev the pastrami between them. It was such fun that Lev wanted to play Pastrami "if there's another siren...but what if there aren't any more sirens ever?" he worried. "I think there'll be at least one or two more," Keret assured him. After a Polish architect built the author a minimalist house in Warsaw, reflecting his stories' spare structures, Keret sat in the kitchen eating jam "sour with memories." His mother grew up in Warsaw and became an orphan after the Nazis killed her family. Gentle reflections on love, family, and heritage.

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June 15, 2015

Award-winning Israeli author Keret's first venture into nonfiction spans the seven years between the birth of his son Lev and the death of his father. In typical Keret style (Suddenly a Knock on the Door), this collection of short stories set in modern war-torn Israel combines satire, dark humor, and imagination to portray the struggles of everyday Israeli existence by those who know that each day could be their last. The writing grows personal when Keret meditates on growing up in a Jewish household and recalls taking his son to the playground, where discussions with other parents ranged from diaper rash to concerns of allowing his three-year-old to grow up to become a soldier. The concluding story tells of entertaining Lev while finding shelter as air raid sirens blare the warning of an impending attack. VERDICT Fans of Keret's prose will not be disappointed. Readers new to his work will be drawn into unimaginable circumstances in which survival is not taken for granted but chronicled in intelligent, compassionate, sarcastic, and sometimes absurdly hilarious stories. [See Prepub Alert, 12/15/14.]--Lorraine Ravis, Monmouth Schs., ME

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