Heatwave and Crazy Birds

April 25, 2011
There might be a compelling novel or, perhaps, several found in this bloated book, but it'll take an unusually devoted reader to slog through a swamp of excess to suss things out. Loya Kaplan, a single flight attendant who's starting to feel like life is passing her by, receives news that she's inherited a house from an acquaintance of her father. She returns to the Israeli housing estate she left 25 years before, now gentrified and called by the developer-friendly moniker Pinewoods Residential Estates. Loya is consumed with the past, and she thinks back on her previous lovers from around the world and her departed family; meanwhile, many of Loya's childhood friends still live at the estate, including Ora, no longer the beauty she once was, whose brother-in-law, Avi, sets in motion events that will lead Loya to face the past in ways that will forever change her. Avigur-Rotem styles gorgeous prose (such as the high heels that have made Loya "almost deaf in the feet"), but the prose alone can't carry a story that starts out as a nice tweak on the fairly standard homecoming/family secrets affair before mushrooming into a chaotic sprawl that too often mistakes top-notch writing for momentum.

June 15, 2011

Despite the expectation that she would follow in the footsteps of her archaeologist father, Loya Kaplan has chosen a rootless existence as a flight attendant. After 25 years of self-imposed exile abroad, during which she severed all ties with her past, Loya must return to Israel in the mid-1990s to carry out a directive in the will of an old family friend. The first three-quarters of the novel can be frustrating, as the author imparts information very slowly, and the reader is left confused by the stream of consciousness and often wondering about the shifting identity of the "you" addressed by the narrator. One gets the sense that the disorientation is deliberate, however, as Loya is a stranger in her own land, assaulted by childhood memories that she and the reader must piece together into a narrative. Loya becomes a reluctant archaeologist of her own family history, digging deep into her parents' experiences during the Holocaust, which were never discussed at home. VERDICT Bilu's new translation of Israeli author Avigur-Rotem's 2001 novel is an extended rumination on history and family. Though the wait is long, the payoff is great.--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.