Customer Reviews

To Know a Woman

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Mr Oz has taken the simpliest of stories and made it a wonderful book to read. His character development made the people so lifelike. A troubled soul has to come to terms with his life and the relationships he had and has with his wife, his daughter, his mother and mother-in-law. His growing awareness of the importance of just living made this novel a true joy. As the novel progresses, we become more involved with the present, rather than the past. Finally we are left with the feeling that the future will be fine.

Yoel Ravid, is my kind of man. He was an Israeli secret service agent for most of his life, and had the ability to sense the truth in people. Amos Oz has written an extraordinary novel, "To Know a Woman". However, in Yoel's quest to find the secret of his life and what might have gone wrong; we learn as does Yoel, much more about his life and how to live it. This novel has been misnamed, it should be "To Know a Man"!

We meet Yoel as he is exploring his retired life. His wife of many years, Irvia, has died suddenly. He is left with a daughter, Netta, whom he doesn't really know. His mother and his mother-in-law live together in an apartment near by, and Yoel feels the need to bring the family together. He cannot abide to live in the apartment that he lived in with his wife. He finds a house to rent with four bedrooms and everyone moves in together. This is a strange family- rarely do they speak or talk of important matters. They sit at night watching TV and rarely speak. Netta, his daughter has epilepsy and we learn that Irvia could not accept this diagnosis. Netta is a young woman who reads- she eats and sleeps at will, stays up all hours of the night and attends school where she does not fit in.

Yoel feels out of place. He is used to being busy all the time, now he has very little to do. He thinks a lot about his life with his wife, how they met and married and their life with Netta. He thinks about his profession. He was rarely at home and his job was his life even though he loved his family. He drives his car at night and thinks. He sleeps little. He visits his next door neighbors who are an interesting couple, brother and sister. And he forms a relationship with his realtor, they go sailing every Saturday, and the realtor tells Yoel all of his secrets. All of this introspection is good for Yoel. His mother and mother-in-law are always arguing. His daughter tells him , "As you wish". for any question he asks her. No one it seems in the family is able to talk freely about what they are really thinking.

The process of Yoel's assimilation of life is a joy to behold. It is a quiet coming together, and we are treated to the most wonderful writing . Yoel's daily life is told in such great detail and with such an explicit description that the mundane becomes revered. A life to be lived. This is my first Amos Oz book, and I look forward to reading his entire collection. Highly Recommended. prisrob

Don't expect a thriller. While Yoel, the protagonist, was a secret service agent, and while he struggles to remember key events from his past that haunt him, this is not a book about secret agents. There is no huge climax. No car chases.

Instead, this is a story of a man recovering from trauma, learning to relate to people, learning to love his daughter, learning to live without his wife. He wanders through his days in a fog, focusing on tiny details of the world, while not responding to the largest figures in his life. It is a story of a sad man who doesn't even know he is sad.

The textures of the book are amazing, giving the reader a perfect sense of the confusion and separation that is Yoel's life. The story builds nicely, and provides some suspense, but the main focus here is the window into the mind of a lost man.

It's amazing that Oz is able to make a novel out of some of the content in this book, such as the gardening details. Oz has written a story that focuses on the truer, less glamourous aspects of Yoel's life and succeeds in painting an ultimately genuine and touching picture of life in general. It's also surprising that the novel is so enjoyable considering that none of the characters are really likeable. Duby is one of the most likeable, but his role is limited. Netta, Ivria, the Krantzes, and the grandmothers are all charcters that are easy to detest. Yoel ends up being the heroic character even though the reader is never sure if he is just as flawed as the other characters, and as the other characters believe him to be. Oz has several very interesting techniques, the most interesting be his recycling of images and ideas throughout the novel. It's refreshing and clearly points out the unity of the story. It is definitely a psychological work, and sometimes borders on mystical. All of the international city references and Hebrew Poets that Netta reads lends it sophistication. The short chapters again keep the pace up, which the novel needs in order to not become mundane. On the whole, it's definitely a good piece of world literature and a nice opening to Oz in general. Or so says the legend...

This is a haunting novel that captures both the landscape and the soul of Israel. It is beautifully written, as are all of Amos Oz's novels, but this one has a compelling sense of place and characters so real they breathe the same air we do. The internal journey the protagonist undergoes suggests that life can provide an act two once one learns to forgive oneself.

There were times when I started to get bored with this story, which is basically an interior monologue, and then Oz would throw in some humor: Yoel fruitlessly chasing the newspaper boy-man, trying to grasp the headlines while listening to the details of the radio news (and vice versa) and trying to decide the significance of a man in a wheelchair he only saw briefly in Helsinki. It was hard to stop reading for long.

The writing is like stream of consciousness where the main character keeps returning to the same thoughts over and over, the way many of us do, but it holds together and gradually becomes clear that Yoel is having an emotional crisis started by the death of his wife and then his retirement from his secretive career. In the end, when he's finally back in the game, so to speak, I was sorry that it had ended. I wondered later what Yoel's crisis would have been like if the Internet had been available to distract him.

Pity the Kindle edition is so overpriced, but that's hardly Oz's fault.

This 1989 novel by one of Israel's foremost novelists is considered a classic. It's set in Israel, mostly in the mind of the protagonist Yoel Ravid. He's a 23-year veteran of the Israeli secret service but that part of his life comes to a sudden end when his wife is killed in a freak accident in their home. In his grief he gives up the life he has known for so many years, but he still keeps his world view of secrets and hidden dangers. As a reader, we see his world through his eyes, detail by detail by excruciating detail as he describes his every move in the new home he has rented - the minutiae of his gardening, his descriptions of his house and every thought that crosses his mind no matter how minor. Sometimes this is frustrating to read, but as I got deeper and deeper into the book, I started to feel I was actually inside of his mind.

Yoel lives in an Israeli suburb with his 16-year old daughter, his mother and his mother-in-law. Their relations are all strained and uncomfortable. He befriends his real estate agent and becomes a mediator in his marital troubles. He also is visited by his ex-boss from the secret service who tries to get him to go back to work. Yoel refuses and the result of what happens then unnerves him. He also has a rather unique dysfunctional relationship with his attractive neighbor and her brother.

All of this is rather sad, tense and frustrating. It is also a little bit boring to read. The author is clearly talented and well respected around the world, winning various prizes for his work. But it's not likely I'll read any more of his books in the near future.

Amos Oz might be on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have never read any of his other books. I picked up the book along others when I shop at public libraries and yard sales. This book was special because it was one of those books where I first got interested immediately. I am not an easy reader. I don't like books that play games with me. I'm not a fan of fiction for today because there seems to be little that I haven't read about yet. Amos Oz's protagonist is a complicated character. He is an Israeli and former spy for his country who spent most of his life away from his wife and daughter, Netta. It was nice to read about a man who loved his wife as much as he did. As if they were one person, rather than two separate individuals, guys, read carefully because women want to be loved spiritually and soulfully as these two people are brought together. Maybe it's given me hope that they are nice men out there for looking for a nice girl like myself. Whatever Amos Oz humanizes his character who must deal with his troubled teenage daughter, his mother and mother-in-law who both live with them. What surprised me is that the politics of the Israeli and middle-east are rarely mentioned as if there are other problems in their lives. It's nice to read that Israelis are not these monsters as portrayed in the media. Amos Oz enlightens readers like myself who never ventured to Israel or ever plan too because of all the problems there. Maybe the problems aren't about politics or differences, maybe the problems are just internal like the protagonist. It's funny how people are not different after all, only if the Israelis and Palestinans can make peace, then maybe there is hope after all. If we can celebrate our similarities rather than argue over differences, we would get along. I became enlightened by this novel because I think Amos Oz wants to bridge the gaps between races, religions, and cultures. We're all human beings after all. We have that in common. Let's celebrate our differences.

This is my first Amos Oz book, as I was reading it, I grew pleased with Amos Oz's writing. Amos Oz is an interesting man. He seems to me as a quite courageous man. I guess quite often there is an element of exposure in the psykie of the artist? Amos Oz also seems to have a trait of this. His story has a somewhat personal, private, touch. Oz has a very, very dry humour, which I enjoyed. Also Amos is a soul searching person, now and then, he is having experiences which tethers the Jewish mystic. I have always had a wish too experience Israel, reading Amos Oz has renewed that wish in me, especially the Israeli spring must be marvelous.

Oz's To Know A Woman is a subtle story of one man's gradual awakening of his own impact on the world. Oz does not do this in bold or grand strokes. It is a gradual process, initiated through tragedy and finally attained through the realization of the suffering of other people. In this way, this novel falls in line with some of Oz's other work: there is the almost Christian notion that through suffering one can attain purity, and in a sense, there is a beauty in suffering which can lead to peace.