Be My Knife: A Novel [Paperback]

David Grossman (Author), Vered Almog (Translator), Maya Gurantz (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 2003

When the awkward, neurotic and childlike Yair, a seller of rare books, sees a beautiful woman across the room at a class reunion he feels compelled to write to her. So begins a love affair of words between two married, middle-aged adults, dissatisfied with their lives, yearning for the connection that has always eluded them. “Be a knife for me,” Yair writes to Miriam, “and I, I swear, will be a knife for you.” As they peel back their inhibitions, their correspondence unfolds into an exchange of their most naked confessions in a novel that is as passionate as it is spellbinding.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Be My Knife, by the highly acclaimed Israeli novelist David Grossman, explores the perennial dilemma of unrequited love. Grossman, however, is far too original a novelist not to give his story a twist. The book opens with a letter written by Yair Einhorn, a neurotic, compulsive rare-books dealer, to Miriam, a beautiful, mysterious woman he glimpses "at the class reunion a few days ago--but you didn't see me." Her offhand gesture and brief, enigmatic smile prompts him to send her a passionate letter, what he calls a "restrained suicide note." To his joy and amazement, she writes back to him. So begins an extraordinary love affair by letter, recounted for the first 200 pages by Yair's impulsive, impassioned, and angst-ridden letters to Miriam. When Miriam finally finds her own voice toward the end of the book, Yair has raised the reader's expectations so high that ultimately her character is rather disappointing. Be My Knife is a novelist's novel about obsession, compulsion, and desire. The writing is dense, demanding, and full of moments of great poetry and inventiveness, but it can become difficult and obscure. Stylistically Grossman is experimenting with plot and character in the grand modernist tradition, and Yair is reminiscent of the tormented "little men" in the works of Joyce and Beckett. However, at times Grossman's brilliant artfulness overwhelms a potentially fascinating story. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Another original premise from Israeli novelist/journalist Grossman: after a shy, middle-aged man notices a beautiful stranger at a reunion, they launch a passionate affair of words.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First edition. edition (April 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312421478
• ISBN-13: 978-0312421472
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,111,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Grossman was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and has been translated into thirty languages around the world. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Rome's Premio per la Pace e l'Azione Umitaria, the Premio Ischia-- International Award for Journalism, Israel's Emet Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange., February 1, 2002

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Be My Knife: A Novel (Hardcover)

The "plot" of this novel is easy to summarize. Yair Einhorn, a 33-year-old, married man sees Miriam, a somewhat older woman, for five minutes at a party, never meets or talks to her, but instantly decides that she would be the perfect person to whom to bare his soul in letters. "We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum...I want to be able to say to myself, 'I bled truth with her. Be a knife for me,'" he says in his introductory letter to her. The first 2/3 of the book consists of Yair's long, self-analytical letters to Miriam, the rest of the novel consisting of Miriam's diary and a separate collage of their comments after the end of the correspondence.

Many readers will have a difficult time suspending disbelief as much as is necessary here to accept the basic premise of this novel--that a complete stranger can write a long, neurotic, and frighteningly personal letter to a woman who does not run away in terror and who, in fact, agrees to be his "knife." In this novel of words rather than actions, Yair says, early in his correspondence, "I never imagined that meeting a stranger's language could be as exciting as the first touch of her body," and he admits to feeling jealous when he finds, in newspapers and advertising, some of the same words Miriam has used in her letters. He also confesses that "something is building up...begging to burst out, something that will suffocate if it doesn't crack..." He admits that his emotional stability is "the size of a peanut." Still Miriam allows the correspondence to continue, even though his letters arrive without postmarks, hand delivered to her mailbox at work.

Self-conscious and, some would say, self-indulgent in the extreme, Yair's letters eventually begin to reveal factual information about his marriage and his child, in addition to his important inner child, which he hopes to rediscover through Miriam, and I found myself grabbing onto these morsels as a way to give some reality and perspective to his lengthy and sometimes repetitious self-analysis. Miriam's diary, on the other hand, is truly touching. Appearing 2/3 of the way through the book, it is a very moving story of a woman who, in addition to working, must also deal with a seriously ill 10-year-old child, a child who was once normal but who is now speechless, living in his own world, and subject to fits. The conclusion, a section called Rain, which comes after the end of the correspondence, is intense and very dramatic.

Though the book is thoughtful and well written, I found it difficult to care much about Yair, whose inner world and needs seem to be his only concern. Miriam, on the other hand, has very real and difficult problems in the outside world, all of them, it seems to me, more urgent than Yair's, yet, until her diary appears late in the book, we know little about her except a few nuggets we glean second-hand from Yair's letters. This is a very introspective novel requiring immense patience, a book which will undoubtedly reward some readers, while perhaps driving others to distraction. Mary Whipple

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This seems something new, October 16, 2002

By 

nancy lapidus "nanlapidus" (Tobyhanna, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Be My Knife: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is one of the toughest books I have ever read, but it seems to be important. The form is unusual - the first person character has a correspondence with a woman he saw at a school reunion. They agree never to meet, but to be completely frank in their letters. For the first 225 pages we read only one side of the correspondence, the man's. Another section contains the diary of the woman. The third section is murky - their thoughts merge, and they may or may not actually meet and interact together. It seems to be about people who are detached from their own feelings as well as estranged from others, even those closest to them. The man may be trying not to be like his father, but still ends up being as cruel and controlling to his own son. All of my conjectures are conditional, as some of the action is unclear, yet I found the book haunting and thought-provoking.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You Never Had An Affair Like This - 'Be My Knife Indeed' !, February 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Be My Knife: A Novel (Hardcover)

In 'Be My Knife' acclaimed novelist David Grossman parses in the deepest way imaginable into the lives of 'Yair' and 'Miriam' who begin an affair of and in words only - a true epistolary tour de force. If you like dense extraordinary imagery, daring and completely off-the-wall thoughts, even more daring and off-the-wall actions, then YOU will love this book and you will continue to come back to it and dip into it, long, long after you have finished it. And after you have finished it, you will be changed. And you will look at your own relationships differently perhaps, even at yourself differently. Whether you have ever had an affair or not. And then you will want to read all his other books that have this amazing style and lack of fear. I rate this ace reading.