Customer Reviews

Her Body Knows: Two Novellas

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an engaging exploration of passion, the kind that can grab you and not let go. The two novellas each concern forms of passion that many of us would say verge on the pathological. Grossman sucks you in immediately, making the book hard to put down. The relationship between the mother and daughter in the second novella is especially stunning in its depth and depiction.

Although I mostly have high praise, I had some misgivings with this book. First the unfair criticism. David Grossman wrote probably the best book I have ever read ("See Under: Love"), and nothing I've read of his since comes close. Second, both novellas were structured in a way that almost felt manipulative, somewhat like a crime novel (think DaVinci Code) which you read voraciously to find out what happens. The first novella is a journey, a long car ride, and I was anxiously reading to find out what the obsessed and suspicious husband would do when he finally reached his wife and whether any physical intimacy would arise between him and the woman driving him. The second novella also had two such questions, whether the dying mother would make it to the end of the story and whether, decades earlier, she had had a sexual relationship with a teenage boy whom she was instructing in yoga.

Nevertheless, a middle-of-the-road effort by David Grossman may be one of the best fiction books you will read this year, especially if obsessive passion fascinates you.

This book, which drew me in from the start, and I read it slowly (in the original Hebrew), made me realise how ridiculous it is to talk about 'women's literature', as if only women writers can really understand women enough to write about them. David Grossman gets into the depths of the heart and souls of his protagonists almost better than any woman could, in both these novellas and in "Someone to run with" - you can literally feel all that they feel as you read. Magnificent!

I just could not let go. I read it in a frenzy to get to the end of the story . He goes far to show the capabilities of the humand mind in the first story,where the husband goes round and round in torment and self torture for ten years. The second story was my favorite ,touching the mother daughter relationship.The parts about Yoga ,giving,working with the body,the character of Nili created by the daughter is a real gem.

These are two other gems of novellas from David Grossman's ever haunting, amazing pen..... Drawn in from the first sentence, not just under the skin of his protagonists, but into their veins, travelling in their blood and cells to their very soul and beyond - that's the feeling I always get when reading his books - His imagery and vocabulary are gifts to the mind and I savor them long after my eyes have devoured them ---- read on, MacDuf !