Customer Reviews

Someone to Run With: A Novel

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This book has to be among the best I've ever read. Too bad that it was originally written in Hebrew, and no one outside of Israel has heard of it. In this country, many teenagers and adults have read it, all have heard of it, and everyone I know loved it. I'm saying this not because I think the popularity of a book is the only mark of its quality, but because Someone to Run With has absolutely no other reviews on this site and I feel as though I should write in the name of all the Hebrew speaking fans of the book, not just myself.

Anyway: I just can't find enough words to express how much I enjoyed reading the book, how heart warming it was, how deeply I sympathized with the characters, and how good it makes me feel to know it's there on the shelf, where I can pick it up to reread at any moment. So instead, I'll try to explain just what's so wonderful about it.

Most importantly, the characterization. Each of the main characters - Asaf and Tamar - is completely real and believable. I swear I still look for them on the street... The author spends a lot of time inside their heads, revealing their views on the world, their frustrations with themselves and those around them, their quirks, just everything... There are so many moments when I think, that could have been me. Asaf and Tamar are also completely lovable, despite their weaknesses, which pulled me into the story and caused me to follow it with almost as much personal involvement as if they had been my best friends. Secondary characters abound and are richly developed and fascinating. My favorite is Theodora, an old nun from the Islands of Greece, who has spent fifty years of her life locked in a church, waiting for a miracle. Her purpose in life is to welcome pilgrims from her Island to the Holy City of Jerusalem, but the island was destroyed by tidal waves decades earlier, and her devotion is futile. Despite a lifetime of loneliness, imprisonment and shattered hopes, Theodora is still a feisty old lady, wise, shrewd, entertaining and kindly, who thrives on her friendship with the young Tamar. To summarize, the book would be worth reading for the sake of the characters only, even if it had absolutely no plot.

But it has a plot, and a wonderful one. Teenagers especially will enjoy it, as the characters deal with problems like loneliness, low self esteem, peer pressure, and unsupportive friends and family. As the book progresses, they also discover a little bit of true friendship and love. Added onto this is an element of danger and suspense. Tamar is forced to venture alone into an underworld of drugs and crime, to rescue a mysterious guitarist named Shai. Asaf's story begins roughly a month after Tamar's, when the dog pound finds Tamar's intelligent yellow dog Dinka running loose in the city. Asaf is delegated to find her owners by attaching a leash and following her wherever she leads. (By the way, the author insists this is an actual method of finding dog-owners - he witnessed it and it inspired the book.) Dinka leads Asaf on a wild goose chase through the city, during which he meets fascinating oddball characters, discovers new things about himself and the reality in which he lives, and is gradually drawn into Tamar's story. I won't reveal any more plot details, to avoid spoiling the book.

A few last words: I read this book in Hebrew, and I really don't know how good the translation is. There are some phrases I can imagine would be quite difficult to convert to English, and would lose much of their meaning in the translation. Also, there are some elements of the story (like allusions to Hebrew songs) that only an Israeli will truly understand. However, I rate the book on par with any English book I've ever read, and being more than half American myself, I believe foreigners should be able to enjoy the story. Also, I've heard many people say that the beginning of the book is a little slow, though personally I disagree. Anyway, please hang on, don't lose patience with Asaf, and it'll be worth your while. This is an amazing book. Spectacular. Worthy of all the superlatives in the dictionary, as well as worldwide recognition. Anyone fortunate enough to read this review, take it seriously, and read the novel, will know they've made an amazing and rare discovery and hurry to share it with the world, just the way I have.

Assaf is not having a good summer. His parents have had to make an emergency trip to America, leaving him behind at a really boring job at Jersusalem City Hall. His best friend, whom he's protected from bullies since first grade, is suddenly the most popular boy in school and only willing to hang out with Assaf if Assaf joins him in activities Assaf would rather avoid. Missing his family and hopelessly bored at his make-work job, the moony sixteen-year-old is bewildered when his supervisor hands him the leash of the most disruptive dog in the animal shelter and tells him to go find the owner and hand that person a big citation for letting the yellow Labrador run loose. Suddenly, Assaf is being hauled all over town by an excited dog who seems to know exactly where she is going. Throughout the day he collects bits and pieces of information about the dog's owner, another sixteen-year-old who may be in trouble. He is determined to find this girl and return her beloved dog to her.

Across town, Tamar is a girl on a much more dangerous mission: to save a drug-addicted boy from an underworld impresario who sends talented runaway kids to perform on street corners across Israel, taking their earnings in return for drugs and a place to crash. The yellow Lab, Dinka, is her dog. How did they become separated? What is innocent Assaf getting involved in here? Who is the boy Tamar is trying to rescue?

I found this the most enjoyable of the David Grossman novels I've read. The translation by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz is so fluid that "Someone to Run With" reads as though it was originally written in English. We get a look at a number of aspects of modern Israeli society from runaway and homeless teenagers to Assaf's close working-class family; from a cloistered nun to the mafia; from a big city that can still seem like a small town to wastelands where abandoned kids lie in ragged shelters. With skill and heart, Goodman shows, rather than tells us the differences and disparity in Israeli society. This enlightening adventure will satisfy both adult and older teen readers. ----Candace Siegle

I have just finished reading this book in Hebrew (and to some extent also in English),and it is indeed terrific. For readers who may wonder why there is no mention of terrorism in a book that takes place largely in Jerusalem, it should be noted that Grossman finished his novel in 1999, at a time when things were relatively peaceful. Since then, several dozen people have been killed or injured in bombing attacks that have occurred in the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall area where much of the novel's action takes place -- even now, however, there are plenty of street performers in the area. Grossman definitely knows what he is writing about. Although it barely mentions current events, "Someone to Run With" is thoroughly rooted in its setting. I think I even know where Theodora's tower would be (on a certain side street about three blocks from the center of town), and I wouldn't be surprised if I were to run into Theodora herself one day, or Tamar's friend Leah, or Rhino, or even Mr. Honigman (though the last is perhaps a bit of a stretch).
Other readers have given good plot descriptions and have pointed to some of the wonderful things about this book -- perhaps most important, its two main characters, whom Grossman clearly (and rightfully) loves. Since Hebrew is not my mother tongue, I read the original version quite slowly, and perhaps for this reason was thoroughly caught up in the complexity of its plot. Grossman's Hebrew is both idiomatic and playful, but the assured quality of his writing does not always come through in the translation. The most egregious slips concern names: Mt. Scopus, for instance, is transliterated from the Hebrew as soemthing like "the Tzofim Mountain" even though its Latin name is quite well known, and the pedestrian mall is inexplicably rendered as "the Walking Street" (as opposed to a running street?). For some reason a character named Matziach in the original is called "Victorious" in English, which is downright silly (and inaccurate -- the name in Hebrew means "successful"). Such slips mar a text that, in the original, is thoroughly engrossing.

Someone to Run With is mostly an enjoyable read, at times even chillingly good. Grossman knows how to tell a good story. I disagree with the Washington Post review above criticizing the chronological scrambling. It's necessary to show the characters' development and adds a great deal to the narrative. For the same reason, the "crucial information being delayed" is also a clever technique, not a bad thing. It makes you imagine that things are one way, and then modify your hypotheses as you gather more information. Nothing wrong with that.
The one problem I did have with the book was some of the figures of speech in the dialogues, which even in the original Hebrew didn't sound convincing, and actually sounded like a convenient opportunity for the author to stick in some catchy phrases. The book would have been tons (really, tons) better without the whole last section. It's completely unnecessary and just drags on for way too long. I advise anyone who's going to read it to simply not read about Shai's recovery. Grossman must have seen Trainspotting and tried to wax junkie, but it's out of line with the rest of the book - and frankly it spoiled it for me.

Assaf, a 16-year-old living in Jerusalem, is sent to find the owner of a lost dog by following her at the end of a leash and to collect a fee for the dog's return. He does not immediately find the owner, but he does find other people who recognize Dinka as the dog of Tamar. One such person is the Greek nun Theodora who is happy to see Dinka but is more concerned about the disappearance of the dog's owner.

Grossman has created a story that involves the reader with a darker side of Jerusalem, but not the one that makes world news. Dealing with the world of the city's disenfranchised streets kids, the book unfolds a tale of two young people each with a mission and how their paths cross. The character's dialogues include much unspoken thought which provides a window into their uncertainties in dealing with others. It also reflects how what is spoken is often not exactly what one feels.

The time construction of the novel was a bit unusual. Each of the stories of the two main characters is a different length in time but converge in the end. The technique is done well and provides the reader with a chance to "put all the pieces together" as the story develops.

I especially like the dog who also is an important character. In fact, she is the thread that brings most of the characters together. And, like the dog, pulling Assaf along, this mini-mystery of a story has enough drive to pull its readers at a non-stop pace through to the end.

I did not know about David Grossman, maybe because as I understand it, he only writes in Hebrew (this book was written in 2000 and translated into English in 2004). I first heard of him when he was interviewed on TV regarding his son, who was killed recently in Lebanon. This is a beautiful, mature (as opposed to "adult") love story written with such purity that I would be happy to recommend it to my grandchildren. The kind of experience of young true love that some of us remember, where sex was just the icing on the cake; at the end of this book, the cake was not even iced yet. I was very sorry to see it end, but not for that reason. The character development was so well done that I felt I was beginning to have some new frienda that I wanted to know better. David Grossman must know a lot about music. As an intrumentalist and sometimes performer, his descriptions of feeling involved in the music performing process rang a lot of familiar bells. He, of course, knows a lot about writing too. His two main characters, the boy (think Koontz Odd Thomas) and the beautiful 16 year old runaway singing genius girl, were developed like two alternately played musical themes in a symphony, tied together by a third theme, the dog, who loved them both before they met. Grossman must know a lot about dogs too. Indeed he knows a lot about life, and how to express it in print. A lot of surprises too, with hints dropped along the way that something is coming up - the other shoe is going to drop. A great, heart-filling read - I hope to find some more Grossman in the future.

First of all, let's start out by discussing the translation - this is a translated book. In its original Hebrew, "Someone to Run With" has a very distinct style of long sentences and a strange, but perfect, flow. The English translation sort of breaks up this flow, but maintains the FEEL, maintains the overall impression, one that is entirely favorable.

The story is a fascinating and engaging one. It begins with 16-year old Assaf running with a dog. Or, rather, chasing a mad dog. Soon, Assaf's story begins to unfold and it becomes clear that he has no idea what he's getting into. Similarly, Tamar's story begins and the reader realizes that Assaf is being thrust into something far bigger than he expects.

This is a story about many things. It is a mystery story, an adventure tale, and in some respects just a perfect young adult book. It is appropriate for teens and above. The characters are perfectly real and enjoyable. The book sucks you in and captures you. There really is no way NOT to like this book. The constantly shifting views will keep you on your toes, not knowing what might happen next. The different times of the two overlapping stories will keep it interesting.

Assaf and Tamar's stories are two fascinating tales of teens forced to grow up, of friendship and of love, and of family. It is an incredible book that will hold you tight and is thoroughly satisfying. Well-written, emotional, and powerful in addition to simply interesting, "Someone to Run With" is an essential read for any true book lover.

Highly recommended!

When we read "Someone to Run With" for our book club, here in Rio de Janeiro, we were all expecting something different from the novel, perhaps something more political, given our knowledge of the author's works. So, we were surprised to find ourselves engrossed in a modern day adventure whose main character is a delightful dog, that meanders through the book, uniting two adolescents, who under normal circunstances would have never met.
At first this is not a very easy novel to get into, [we read the Brazilian version, in Portuguese], because the chapters, don't appear in the beginning to have anything to do with one another: from a young man with a dog, we move to a young woman who is obivously on some kind of mission we don't understand. Time frames are also different. So Grossman asks the reader to trust his narration. When you do, you are involved in an amazing adventure, with many twists and turns. Great supporting characters provide colorful backgrounds; and we are also given an excellent description of the way adolescents think about their families, their surroundings and the creative ways they can find to cope with an incomprehensible and scary world.
Another point of interest was the details of every day life in Jerusalem, something we tend to forget that it goes on normally, regularly, predictably, when all of our knowledge of the city comes via television news, covering bombs and terrorism.
Despite all of the enjoyment, I still think this book to be better directed at a teenage readership. 4 stars. No regrets.

I think that the book Someone To Run With is one of the best books I have ever read. The way that Grossman writes is very interesting and when I first picked up the book it seemed a little confusing. But once I got into the book I found out that the way he writes is different and more involved. This story line is kind of bizarre but after you catch the idea you just want to keep reading it. The characters constantly go from place to place and there is something around every corner. Even in the end when you think it is over what happens is something that you would have never expected. I recommend this to anyone who likes adventure books or just likes to read.

In his usual way, David Grossman weaves a marvelous tale of the lives of seemingly ordinary people and the extraordinary events that happen to them--or that they make happen.

In this wonderfully crafted novel, it's a teenage boy--the shy Assaf, somewhat of a loner who doesn't think much of his accomplishments as an amateur photographer, but who is also a devoted employee in his summer job as a municipality employee. So much so, that when he is assigned the task of finding the owner of a lost dog to slap him with a fine, Assaf runs after the dog for days until he finds that owner.

Woven into the story--and not less important--is the background story of Tamar, a teenage girl set to leave her home and live in the streets. She has a higher goal in this, but if I told you it would be a spoiler.

Set against the landscape of Jerusalem with its array of idiosyncratic characters that can only be gathered in this holy city, Assaf finally finds the dog's owner, Tamar, and together they discover something larger than both their lives apart.

Talia Carner, author,
Puppet Child and China Doll