The Book of Intimate Grammar: A Novel [Paperback]

David Grossman (Author), Betsy Rosenberg (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2002

Aron Kelinfeld is the ringleader among the boys in his Jerusalem neighborhood, but as his 12-year-old friends begin to mature, Aaron remains imprisoned in the body of a child for three long years. While Israel inches toward the Six-Day War, and his friends cross the boundary between childhood and adolescence, Aron remains in his child’s body, spying on the changes that adulthood wreaks as, like his hero Houdini, he struggles to escape the trap of growing up.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Again displaying the special insights into adolescent psychology previously seen in See Under: Love , Israeli novelist Grossman has fashioned a powerful, emotionally devastating novel that chronicles a young boy's fears, anguish and breakdown. Aron Kleinfeld is 11 and a half when we meet him and his crass, ill-bred parents in a seedy Jerusalem housing project. Sensitive and imaginative, he is a great dreamer and ringleader of escapades among his circle of friends, though they are beginning to scorn his childish fantasies. Other signs of stress soon appear: his parents' anxious references to Aron's slow growth and his own awareness of his short stature and scrawny physique, coupled with his observation of the signs of puberty in his pals, make Aron acutely self-conscious and arouse feelings of humiliation and self-hatred. Aron, reluctant to mature socially, psychologically and physically, becomes so revolted by the adult world of hairy armpits and sex and complex, mediated feelings that he eventually feels that "having a body is itself a defect." Yet the reader's sympathy for this naive, gauche nebbish grows in proportion to Aron's suffering, as Grossman brilliantly creates Aron's agonized stream of consciousness. Painfully lonely, feeling rejected by family and friends, to Aron ". . . words had come to be utterly inward, whispering a grammar so intimate and tortuous they could never break forth into the light." Grossman's portrait of Aron will stand as a classic study of adolescent turmoil set against the muted backdrop of his country's imminent, violent and compromised coming of age in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Grossman, one of Israel's premier young novelists (e.g., The Smile of the Lamb, LJ 1/91), presents an Israeli rite de passage worthy of comparison with Salinger and Golding. Twelve-year-old Ahron, the ring-leader of the boys in his Jerusalem neighborhood, counts the minutes in class in anticipation of the games and adventures to be played after school. But when his buddies start leaving their childhood pranks behind, Ahron is devastated. He tells his friend Gideon that he will go it alone: "he would never stop, he would break into strange houses, and escape out of boxes and trunks and cars, he would stay as he was himself forever." With sublime skill, Grossman conveys the enormous pain involved in the loss of the world of childhood. As the Six-Day War approaches, Ahron imitates his hero Houdini in an attempt to escape adulthood and like Peter Pan vows never to grow up. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.
Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Picador (October 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312420951
• ISBN-13: 978-0312420956
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,563 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

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A journey of one boy into adolesence and out of this world., February 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Intimate Grammar (Hardcover)

A young boy named Aaron struggles to get away from the things in his life that appall him the most: food, his family, girls(with one exception), and the war. With his over-self-reflection Aaron is dragged into his own world of masochism and special words saved like pennies in a jar for rainy days. He is a boy that is mixed up and not so mixed up. He composes the child that we have all been for at least one moment in time. He is the future, he has been part of the past, and he is ageless while still being locked within an age

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars book of intimate grammar, March 12, 2003

By 

Hunter Anne Holt "huntoo" (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Intimate Grammar (Paperback)

it's been a long time since i read a book written in stream-of-consciousness, and when i picked up and started this book, i realized
that i'd attempted to read it before and, i guess, just hadn't been in the mood to attempt it at some previous time. i'm glad i persisted.

the immediacy of the 14-year-old main character's experiences is visceral and moving. the book is described as a [...] it is also a sometimes erotic, often comic, and almost always relentlessly intriguing word picture of a painfully excised slice-of-life on glaring display. the 14-year-old's confusion, and his labyrynthine interior exploration for the causes of the effects he sees so keenly (effects which are described vividly and sympathetically) open understanding to the reader. grossman is masterful.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars poignant and hard to put down, July 13, 2008

By 

Miriam Friedmann - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Intimate Grammar: A Novel (Paperback)

Aron is the overly sensitive and thoughtful adolescent son of two parents who vie for the place of the most awful parents in Israeli literature (uneducated, uncouth, self-centered, extremely nosy, while also completely oblivious to Aron's troubles). In any case, his parent are too busy living through their own crises. Aron's body's refusal to grow up mirrors Grossman's perception of Israeli society: precocious and extremely childish at the same time, reflective, yet stuck. The book takes place in the time of (false?) innocence prior to the Six Day War. Friends, sister, neighbor weave in and out of Aron's life, but he is left on his own, constructing his own intimate grammar, trying to experience something that is impossible in the words and according to the rules of his native tongue. He tries and needs to break the bounds of language, body, and fate. It is never quite clear whether he succeeds.

This is not Grossman's only forray into exploring the adolescent experience. It is perhaps his best.