Customer Reviews

Open Heart

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

 

 

With this novel, Yehoshua again returns to exploring the themes of Love and Identity, this time in a more intimate setting. The impossible, almost grotesque love of a young doctor (Benjy) to the middle-aged mother of his patient is described in detailed realism, yet the story is imbued with a sense of mysticism and mystery. Identities and feelings are exchanged and mixed through blood transfusions, and Love invades one's being as if from an external source. Yehoshua captures the profound mystery permeating "regular" people and situations. The many faces of Love, as well as its imitations, limitations and glaring absences are examined without flinching. Benjy is torn between desolate loneliness and identity-devouring symbiosis; the alternative path of co-existence with autonomy (offered by the independent Michaela) seems to him somehow incompatible with Love.
The Hebrew title of this novel is "The Return from India"; passages infused with Eastern spirituality and the transmigration of souls contrast with minute, surgically-precise medical descriptions and all-too-earthly human ambitions and professional rivalries. The narrative unfolds slowly, luxuriously, allowing the reader to become completely immersed in Yehoshua's world. A wonderful, richly rewarding book.

I read Open Heart after having taken a course with AB Yehoshua and after having read Mr. Mani, A Late Divorce, and The Lover, and found it the least satisfactory of these four novels. (I would give the other 3 five stars.) I found the narrator annoying and his relationship with the fifty year old woman unconvincing. I think Yehoshua is brilliant at depicting all kinds of people except middle aged women, and I don't think he really understood how a woman would react under such circumstances. However, I loved the descriptions of India, and thought the prose style in general made the book worth reading.

I sank into Open Heart with delight, having just finished Journey to the End of the Millenium, a wonderful book. Yehoshua's humor and sophistication won me over in both books. He knows people. And the translations were excellent. Still, the final pages of Open Heart were a big disappointment: it was as though he'd had to rush off and couldn't be bothered to finish what he'd started.

I agree with the opinions written. However, I would like to ask what people think of the ending. What is your opinion of exactly how it ended? Maybe i lost interest and didn't look closely enough. thanks

After reading this book, I have wanted to travel to India-that is how fascinating and compelling the descriptions were; plus, while reading, the charcters' obsession for India, and what it stands for to them, evokes more empathy for the characters, and their story. The character portrayals are very realistic. I did not always like the characters, but I could visualize them. The story is very compelling. Even if the main character is not sympathetic (and actually very annoying at times), those around him are sympathetic; they are less complicated and more fanciful. What is interesting is how one can see the characters as Benjamin sees them, but without his influence. So, even if Benjy looks down on them, we, as readers, do not have to join him.

Any book that holds my attention for 500 pages must have something going for it. I am an impatient reader and critical, but I enjoyed reading about Benjy, even if he was whiny and ungrateful. The scenes in India and London are well done, and his wife is an interesting character. The author's italicized chapter beginnings are too mystical for me. I quit reading them after two or three. If one of them had prefaced the first chapter, I never would have taken this book out of the library.

While studying in Israel I took a class with A.B. Yehoshua. I became interested in his writing, and I have read almost everything that he has written. His writing is always beautiful and mesmorizing. This book is his best. The story holds you from beginning to end, and excites your imagination. Yehoshua's writing has a way of transporting you into the world of the characters. I would give it a 10, except for the fact the ending is a little disappointing. Other than the ending I absolutely loved this book and strongly recommend it along with any of his other books.

I read this book because I loved Mr. Mani. Unfortunately Yehoshua seems to be trying to earn the "Israeli Faulkner" title a little too much by this plodding, lifeless thing. I figure that there has to be major symbolism since the characters are so awkward, but the closest I could come was that the old lady(mother figure) who captures the heart of our protagonist is a life sustaining goddess while the wife is a goddess of destruction and the child (Shiva) is both together. So when the narrator is left with just the child at the end, he's managed to integrate both sides of his soul. I like that part. The rest of the book bored me. I couldn't stand the narrator and the scenes with him and the 50 year old love interest served only to remind me of Umberto Eco's parody of Lolita entitled Granita where the young man went after nursing home patients. Eco only took 8 pages while Yehoshua takes 500 pages. Read this book only if you are a diehard fan and you are willing to accept a lot of Yehoshua's babbling. If you are only curious about Yehoshua, read Mr. Mani.

The central pivot upon which the plot depends is disgusting, unbelievable, but, oddly, did NOT keep me from finishing the book, which was a page-turner. I read ALL 500 pages with interest; there was something engaging on each page. However, the book is marred by its plot device of having a 29 year old medical resident fall in lust with his hospital administator's wife. The wife is always presented as helpless, dependent, stubborn, plumpish and with her belly hanging out, so that the constant refrain of Dr. Rubin's love for this woman made him and all else seem contrived and ridiculous. The odd thing is that Yehoshua is aware of, and harps on, the inexplicable nature of Rubin's love, so that I realized the book is supposed to be symbolic: the "impossible" love standing for spiritual reality, which also seems "impossible;" but, in order for that unspoken comparison to work, there has to be credibility in the plot. The plot is only credible in those portions where Yehoshua did a lot of research to make the medical angle resonate; but the plump, self-absorbed love-object, Dori, remains completely unappealing throughout, yet Dr. Rubin thinks of little else. The lust the young doctor developes and pursues with this woman makes him dishonest, dishonorable, compulsive, and immoral. The author tries to insert the idea that Lazar's soul has taken over young Rubin, but this is toward the end and is unconvincing and contrived. I don't know why I finished the book. I did not mind the ending at all. The helpless, narcissistic "Dori" finally -on almost the last page- says she wants to be alone. Her horror of being alone was also the main attraction for her husband, who - she finally says- smoothered her with his love. I found the woman repugnant, which is also Dr. Rubin's first impression. Their trip to India, somehow, is supposed to account for his flip-flop into love. Dori's husband, we find, used to put his entire hospital at her disposal, she being unable to write bills, use household applicances, etc. Rubin, in picking up the director's soul- would naturally want to clean up after this pampered and stupid woman, making him a suitable companion. He ends up -to wind down the plot- too much like Lazar. I found it impossible to believe that a woman married almost 40 years would respond to Rubin at all, or that Rubin would be struck by her, even on a soul level. That Dori finally says something that makes sense at the end, and Rubin will be able to let go of his passion, thanks to his own mother retreiving his own daughter from India, where his crazy wife has taken her, is a good ending for a senseless plot.

Overall, both on the level of style, delivery, character development, pacing and plot, Open Heart is disappointing. Yehoshua is a master of the complex style of fiction; of breaking up a narrative, of exploring the perimeters of what makes a novel tick. Here there is none of that. There are peculiar, italicized beginnings to each chapter, which appear to do little in the way of clarifying what happens within, and as an experiment, leaves the reader scratching his or her head. The novel is overwritten; some very beautiful bits of writing about India are sandwiched between much material that is overwrought and unnecessary.

One quality redeems: The novel is a convincing narrative of a young surgeon. Yehoshua did his homework, mastering the terminology and mind set of the working doctor. But even that can not save this novel from mediocrity. Open Heart is not this author's best work; and certainly, should be placed low on any reading list of his work.