A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz, Harcourt, Inc., 2003
By Sheila Orysiek
SAN DIEGO — Is it fair to write a review of a book after having read only 55 out of a total of 358 pages? Probably, not. And, yet, that is exactly what I am going to do. Amos Oz is considered by many to be one of Israel’s greatest living authors and I was looking forward to reading this book.
The author is a Professor of Literature at Ben Gurion University and has been published in both fiction and non-fiction. His books have been translated from Hebrew into 42 languages (including Arabic) in 43 countries. He has been honored and given awards such as: Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. The reviews of his books run the gamut from celestial to unreadable.
A Tale of Love and Darkness is a memoir of the author’s life. His family moved from Europe to Israel and Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939. He was an only child and deeply introspective, using his imagination to supply the need for companionship. However, even when friends were available, he often choose to spend the time alone; he preferred the company of his imagination. He created scenarios of war, strife, fortifications, exploration, soldiers, ships, unknown islands, empires won and lost, using anything that he could find around the house: paper clips, buttons, dominoes, chess pieces, etc. The details of these intense games of imagination are described a number of times.
The memoir is not linear but darts forward and back through time. Each person and event, no matter the importance, is presented with layers over more layers of sensory description. He writes about a walk his family took on Saturday afternoons to his uncle’s house – here is a sample:
“Here, in King George V Avenue, as well as in German-Jewish Rehavia and rich Greek and Arab Talbieh, another stillness reigned now, unlike the devout stillness of those indigent, neglected Eastern European alleys; a different, exciting, secretive stillness held sway in King George V Avenue, empty now at half part two on a Saturday afternoon, a foreign, in fact specifically British stillness, since King George V Avenue (not only because of its name) always seemed to me as a child to be an extension of that wonderful London Town I knew from films; King George V Avenue with its rows of grand, official-looking buildings extending on both sides of the road in a continuous uniform facade, without those gaps of sad, neglected yards defaced by rubbish and rusting metal that separated the houses in our own areas. Here on King George V Avenue there were no dilapidated verandas, no broken shutters at windows that gaped like a toothless old mouth, paupers’ windows revealing to passerby the wretched innards of the home, patched cushions, gaudy rags, cramped piles of furniture, blackened frying pans, moldy pots, misshapen enamel saucepans, and a motley array of rusty tin cans. Here on either side of the street was an uninterrupted, proud facade whose doors and lace-curtained windows all spoke discretely of wealth, respectability, soft voices, choice fabrics, soft carpets, cut glass, and fine manners. Here the doorways of the buildings were adorned with black glass plates of lawyers, brokers, doctors, notaries, and accredited agents of well-known foreign firms.”
The walk continues….step by step …..in all….for seven pages. Then he begins to describe his uncle’s house.
Most writers have a love of language. However, I think this is quite different from falling in love with one’s own words. This is reinforced with praise ringing in one’s ears and thus leads to a second conclusion: “if everything I write is so highly praised why not write even more words?”
However, being the recipient of so many illustrious literary prizes and so widely published, are facts a potential reader cannot ignore. Whether more is better or too much, is surely a subjective opinion.
As Muriel Humphrey once said to her husband Vice President Hubert Humphrey: “It doesn’t have to be eternal to be immortal.”
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Orysiek is a freelance writer who specializes in arts and literature. The author may be contacted via sheila.orysiek@sdjewishworld.com
I agree. In a nutshell,this is the author’s worst book. Someone should have stopped him before he published it. Having read them all, even I, who never give up on a novel,slogged through this one and it was painful to the end and easily forgettable.
–Catherine Hand, Alpine, California