| Description: |
|
From Amazon
If you want to read one novel that captures the difficulty of living under a veil of terror, read Edeet Ravel's Ten Thousand Lovers. This mesmerizing love story opens in Jerusalem in the 1970s, where Lily, an Israeli-Canadian linguistics student, is trying to hitchhike to Tel Aviv. Ami, a handsome army interrogator, picks her up and they soon fall in love, but maintaining their happiness in a country constantly on the verge of war is no simple feat. After all, as Ami warns, "this is a land that devours its inhabitants." Nevertheless, they attempt to spin a cocoon of happiness for themselves and their idealistic group of friends, who represent the various aspects of Israeli society, including an Arab named Ibrahim and his Mennonite girlfriend Mary Jo. Lily becomes pregnant and she and Ami marry, but Ami's warning--and his profession--return to haunt them. Writing in a style both matter-of-fact and vulnerable, Ravel heartbreakingly illustrates the futility of striving for normalcy in a country gone mad. Looking for perspective on the crisis, in which the politics debated by the characters have hardly changed in 35 years, Lily constantly refers to the etymology of Hebrew words. She shows how even the erotic language of the ancient "Song of Songs" has been transformed into the words of violence: "grenade" stems from "pomegranate" and "terrorist" evolved from "spoil." The name of Lily's lover has a similarly complicated history: "The word am means nation, and ami means 'my nation,' but Ami's mother liked the name because she was French. Actually, the French world for friend, ami, is close to a Hebrew word for friend, amit, and Ami was almost called Amit, but a nurse at the hospital made a mistake and wrote Ami on all the documents." True to his name, Ami is symbolic of many in the nation, torn between his love for his country and his conscience. Ami is highly complex and endearing character, and his and Lily's love story will not be easily forgotten. --Leah Eichler
|
