Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love (Jewish Women Writers) [Paperback]

Judith Katzir (Author), Dalya Bilu (Translator), Hannah Ovnat-Tamir (Afterword)

Book Description

Series: Jewish Women Writers | Publication Date: May 1, 2008

“I read the book with wonder and emotion. The love between Michaela and Rivi is depicted precisely and delicately. . . . It’s beautiful.”—Amos Oz

“More than anything else, the book is a temple of love to the imaginary, and to literature as an option for deep and vigorous living.”—Ya’ara Muki, Time Out

Written by best-selling Israeli author Judith Katzir, Dearest Anne is a stirring record of an artist’s coming-of-age during the 1970s and the story of a hidden, erotic love affair between a teenaged girl and her married teacher, Michaela.

After reading Anne Frank’s diary, young Rivi starts a series of writing notebooks that document the angst of growing up in rural Israel. The entries reveal how her crush on her literature teacher develops into a poignant and turbulent love affair that lasts for years before its scandalous end.

Decades later, the grown Rivi, now a mother, wife, and established author, comes to terms with the forbidden love that shaped her future.

Judith Katzir was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1963. Her previous works include Inland Lighthouses, Closing the Sea (published under the name Yehudit Katzir), and Matisse Has the Sun in His Belly, for which she received the Book Publishers Association’s Platinum and Gold Book Prizes, the Prime Minister’s Prize, and the French WIZO Prize.

Dalya Bilu is a well-known translator of Hebrew literature. She has been awarded the Israel Culture and Education Ministry Prize for Translation.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

When Rivi Shenhar returns to Israel for a funeral, she unearths a collection of her childhood diaries kept decades before. Addressed to Anne Frank, her old diaries chronicle Rivi’s impassioned and intense coming-of-age. Rivi grows up in mid-1970s rural Israel, living with her mother, a critical and vacant woman, after her parents divorce. Though largely isolated by her peers and superiors, 14-year-old Rivi is intellectually and emotionally inquisitive, and she finds solace in a budding relationship with her literature teacher, Michaela, who is engaged to be married. This relationship soon evolves into an illicit, passionate affair that lasts for years, providing Rivi and Michaela with the love and companionship they crave. Katzir’s prose is evocative, at times furiously erotic, as Rivi archives her progression from insecure teenager into a self-assured woman. The story is most affecting in the moments of internal reflection from an adult Rivi, later a mother and accomplished author, and in the raw emotion she rediscovers within the narratives of her adolescent self. --Leah Strauss

About the Author

Best-selling Israeli author Judith Katzir studied General Literature and Cinema at Tel Aviv University, where she now teaches Creative Writing. She is the author of Matisse Has the Sun in His Belly, which received the Book Publishers Association's Platinum and Gold Book Prizes, the Prime Minister's Prize, and the French WIZO Prize. Dalya Bilu is a well-known translator of Hebrew literature and has translated the works of Zeruya Shalev, A.B.Yehoshua, Yaakov Shabtai, Aharon Appelfeld, Judith Katzir, Batia Gur and more. She has been awarded The Israel Culture and Education Ministry Prize for Translation, the Times Literary Supplement Prize and the Jewish Book Council Award for Hebrew-English Translation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155861575X
• ISBN-13: 978-1558615755
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #706,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The story of Rivi, many decades after a lesbian love affair with her teacher, July 10, 2008

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love (Jewish Women Writers) (Paperback)

Finely translated into English by Dalya Bilu, "Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love" is the story of Rivi, many decades after a lesbian love affair with her teacher. The teacher, Michaela, has passed on, and Rivi returns to Israel to pay her condolences and mourn a relationship that could never be. Faced with the results of her decision in life, she turns to her notebooks addressed to Anne Frank to help her reflect. An original tale, "Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love" is highly recommended for community library world fiction collections.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, provocative but ultimately perverse, June 3, 2009

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Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love (Jewish Women Writers) (Paperback)

I'm a little conflicted about how to review this book. On one hand, it's well-written and provocative and it does present a beautifully-observed time capsule of Israel in the late 1970s when the country's youth was freeing itself from the strictures of classic Zionism and opening itself to the world of hedonistic sexual liberation.
It's also rich in literary allusions (curiously, one scene refers to Goethe's poem, "The Erlking" which also looms large in my own book The Nazi Hunter: A Novel
On the other hand, there's something very nasty and vile at the center of the book that the author only half-acknowledges -- an affair between a 14-year-old girl and her 28-year-old English teacher.
The fact that this is a lesbian affair didn't bother me. The fact that such blatant child-abuse is presented as something beautiful and precious did.
The book is cast in the form of a diary written by 14-year-old Rivi Shenhav. Inspired by Anne Frank who wrote her diary to an imaginary friend she called "Kitty", Rivi writes her diary to Anne and signs her entries Kitty. Some suggested this device is disrespectful to the Holocaust and the memory of its victims. I don't agree. It's an effective framing device and makes the point that in many ways Rivi gets to live the life Anne was denied by the Nazis. Rivi and Anne share many characteristics, not least a literary talent and poetic sensibility. I can definitely imagine a young Israeli girl identifying with Anne. It may be that Katzir is arguing for a more nuanced way for Israelis to grapple with the Holocaust and memory. Two scenes regarding the way Holocaust Memorial Day is observed in her school in Haifa make that point in interesting ways.
Rivi is bruised by her parents' divorce and her father's inexplicable decision to shun her. Lonely, nerdy and miserable, she hero-worships her literature teacher Mihaela, a married women with flaming hair who seems like the only sympathetic adult in her life. Soon, a love affair develops between them, which persists for almost two years. Rivi presents herself as the sexual aggressor but we gradually learn that she is far from being so.
Mihaela is the pivotal character of the book. She deceives her husband to carry on with this young girl -- but we later learn she is also capable of betraying Rivi. In one revolting scene, she lures Rivi to a tryst with a 50-year-old sculptor; the two of them get the girl drunk and drugged and try to engage in a threesome aimed at relieving Rivi of her "hetrosexual virginity." Perhaps she also wants to sour the young girl from men for ever.
As an adult, Rivi confronts her former teacher and asks, "How could you have done what you did?" Mihaela responds that she did it for love. But the scene is unsatisfactory. Neither Rivi nor the author force Mihaela to give a full moral accounting of her actions.
And yet, it is Mihaela and not Rivi who seems most damaged by the affair, which seems to me another blatant evasion by the author.
The gay and lesbian community in Israel rejected this book -- and one can see why. Lesbianism is presented as a choice (the older Rivi has affairs with men, marries and has two daughters of her own) and it is also conflated with the very touchy issue of pedophilia.
I too found the many mixed messages problematic. Rivi reverts to hetrosexuality and traditional motherhood and is rewarded by "happiness" while Mihaela continues to prey on younger female student, develops cancer and dies in her fifties. What is Katzir trying to say here?
There are many complex strands here, which is what makes the book interesting and worth reading. But the message ultimately seems not just subversive but curiously perverse.

4.0 out of 5 stars Pleasurable Experience, February 11, 2010

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Donna Blanc "empirelady" (New York City,NY) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love (Jewish Women Writers) (Paperback)

I had bought the book used but it was in perfect condition. There were some interesting aspects of Israeli history. I was very impressed and moved by the huge shift at the end of the book. I would definitely order another book from them again,as it was definitely a pleasurable experience(and a great bargain).