Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as a novel that "broke all the barriers...sexually explicit yet dense with biblical allusions and psychological insight," Love Life unbuttoned Hebrew literature and spent four months as Israel's number one best-seller. What begins as a story of a young married woman's turbulent affair with an older man rapidly devolves into a feverish, lyrical crash course in the anatomy of obsession. When Yaara meets Aryeh, her father's boyhood friend, she is instantly drawn to his impassive and archly assured presence. It is not long before she forsakes her devoted and well-meaning husband for the powerful, mysterious older man who seems to embody all that she lacks: will, strength, and the key to her parents' inaccessible pasts. They embark on a heated affair that soon spirals toward the destructive as Yaara finds that the things in Aryeh that attract her also repel her with equal intensity. With shocking immediacy, Shalev lays bare Yaara's struggle to navigate extreme terrain ranging from the sublime to the grotesque, the sacred to the profane, the liberating to the all-consuming. Love Life is cerebral, seductive, provocative, and profound.
Love Life: A Novel
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This sexy, densely written Israeli bestseller takes up where Erica Jong left off, documenting the escapades of an otherwise intelligent heroine who lets her comfortable marriage fall apart as she pursues erotic adventure and personal fulfillment. Bored by her husband, despite or perhaps because of the way he calls her Moley (she calls him Ratty) and uninspired by her graduate studies in biblical legends, Ya'arah yearns for passionate excitement. She meets the unlikely object of her obsession at her parents' home when her father's friend Aryeh Reven returns to Israel to care for his dying wife. Ya'arah falls head over heels for the aging Lothario, first seeking him out in the dressing room of a clothing store, then in other equally inconvenient but titillating locales. Ya'arah is enthralled by Aryeh's links to her parents' younger days, the years before the devastation of their son's death blighted their lives. Jeopardizing her career by missing meetings and ignoring assignments, leaving her husband to take their romantic vacation alone, then spying on him from an airport corner as he deplanes, Ya'arah seems bent on her own destruction. With appallingly bad timing, she shows up at Aryeh's apartment while he sits shivah with his in-laws. Shalev echoes and outdoes Jong with outrageously sensuous, often humiliating situations described by a narrator who acts as if she has lost her sanity while commenting wryly, even perceptively, on her own misdeeds. Whether Ya'arah is lying to the head of her department or interpreting ancient stories, she explodes with ingenuity and eventually insight as she comes to understand her mother's choices and, to some extent, Israeli society, with its visceral ties to the past. (Mar.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this sensual first novel from Israel narrated in the first person by Ya'arah, a young woman with serious identity problems, the reader is introduced to her dysfunctional family. In an attempt to fathom her parents' strange behavior and constant battles, she is drawn into a relationship with Aryeh, a man twice her age and her father's former childhood friend. The love affair is portrayed as an addiction, sometimes cruel, at other times filled with animal magnetism and aging decay. She forsakes her sweet, sheepish, well-meaning husband, Yoni. Aryeh on the other hand is "so strong and gave you the feeling of such security but not trust." Yoni proposes a trip to Istanbul, which Ya'arah views as a mission, "not a pleasure trip but a punishment trip which would strengthen and purify." She does not go, becoming mired in family tragedy and sexual destructiveness. The book is laced with biblical allusions and much psychological underpinnings. Ya'arah achieves a modicum of maturity in the midst of much grotesque acting out. The result is a tedious sexual romp, making for a novel that is difficult to recommend.
-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love Life,
By Romy (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Love Life (Hardcover)
I devoured Love Life. Never have I read a more honest, disturbing, and brilliant account of the way uncertainty in love and life can translate into obsession and erotic fury. I recommend this book to anyone who is not afraid to take a magnifying glass to the darkest corners of the self. The truth is, Shalev's seemingly bottomless reservoir of fresh, gorgeous imagery and her nearly flawless command of language make even that view beautiful. I can't imagine that anyone who reads this book will be left unaffected; when i finished it I felt eviscerated. But pleasantly so.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love Life,
By penny70@012.net.il (Israel) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Love Life (Hardcover)
A wonderful book, compelling to read. I read it non-stop for three days and felt that I was flung into the haphazard world of the main character, Ya'ara. The writing is supurb. Descriptive, intimate and sometimes painfully easy to identify with. The situation is human and the characters are simple people who have all the complexities of those we know and love in our own lives. Bravo to Shalev! A must!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
enthralling wise tale of the power of the withheld.,
By "jintnet" (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Love Life: A Novel (Paperback)
One of the most absorbing and alluring books I have read in a long time. This is an incredibly psychologically astute writer. She tells a wonderfully evocative and erotic tale of the power of desire for the unattainable and the unknown.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
He was not my father and not my mother so why did he open the door of their house to me, filling the narrow space with his body, squeezing the door handle, and I began to retreat, I must have mistaken the floor, but the decorated plate insists that it is their house, at least it was their house, and in a weak voice I asked, what's happened to my parents, and he opened his big, gray mouth wide, nothing's happened to them, Ya'ara, my name fluttered in h is mouth like a fish in a net, and I burst inside, my arm brushing against his cold, smooth arm, crossed the empty living room, and opened the closed door of their bedroom. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Aryeh Even, Professor Rose New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
He was not my father and not my mother so why did he open the door of their house to me, filling the narrow space with his body, squeezing the door handle, and I began to retreat, I must have mistaken the floor, but the decorated plate insists that it is their house, at least it was their house, and in a weak voice I asked, what's happened to my parents, and he opened his big, gray mouth wide, nothing's happened to them, Ya'ara, my name fluttered in h is mouth like a fish in a net, and I burst inside, my arm brushing against his cold, smooth arm, crossed the empty living room, and opened the closed door of their bedroom. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Aryeh Even, Professor Rose New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
3
books
cite this book:
- Husband and Wife by Zeruya Shalev in Front Matter
- I Take Thee, English, for My Beloved by Eileen R Tabios on page 491
- Rembrandt's Whore: A Novel by Sylvie Matton in Back Matter
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