Zeruya Shalev: Love Life

By PENNY BIEDER*

American reviews, mostly loud in their praise, call this Israeli novel the writer's startling debut. It may be her first novel translated from Hebrew by well-known translator Dalya Bilu, but it is not her first novel.

Love Life spent four months heading Israel's bestseller list, and Fay Weldon's blurb on the cover whoops: "Erotic, fanciful, wise - Love Life is like nothing else. I loved it."

I'm in accord, except for those last three words. Somehow this novel about a young, conflicted, neurotic woman is not one that brings to mind the word love, despite its title. Phrases like desperate, wild infatuation, unholy obsession, insane self-destruction spring to mind.

Shalev was raised on a kibbutz and now lives in Jerusalem but throughout this story, set in Israel, there is never a hint of an intifada. The politics are all personal, though their extreme explosions and psychological minefields may somehow echo the infinite tragedy that is gripping Shalev's country.

Young, married, bored, beautiful, Ya'ara barely stops to introduce herself before plunging into an outrageous and fascinating description of her growing attraction to her father's best friend, the jaded and worldly, silver-haired Aryeh Even. The first line of the novel possibly explains a little of what is to come: "He's not my father and not my mother so why does he open the door of their house to me ... "

Ya'ara, a post-graduate student, is happily married to Yonny, a sweet, supportive and predictable man. She is feeling defiant, angry, petulant, stubborn and by turns passive, submissive and pliant to the point of humiliation.

In the first chapter she challenges the reader to strongly dislike her. She wags college, shoplifts, lets her best friend's cat out of her apartment to its certain death and keeps quiet. In other words, she behaves like a vital, normal adolescent - it is a surprise, then, to find that Ya'ara is in her twenties.

In a headlong rush she insinuates herself into Aryeh's life with unforeseen consequences. And she gradually learns about herself and her parents and their unresolved grief for her baby brother who died in his first month of life. But not before she experiments with her own sexuality, described in feverish, intense torrents - streams of consciousness of a graphic nature that are, yes, like nothing else.

If you can learn to handle Ya'ara and her self-absorption, and see past this to the stunning immediacy of the writing, this novel will reward you with its entertaining study of how one person conducts their life - and whether they rule it or are ruled by it.

In the end, the key to Ya'ara (and to everyone, I suspect) is how she perceives herself and the choices she makes, how she chooses to lead her life. As she says: "But I myself don't know what I am yet ... in the morning I'm bold and in the evening I'm afraid, in the morning I'm ready to set the world on fire and in the evening I want a man to look after me ... "

And of course, when Aryeh answers her desire for "a man who'll be prepared to look after you in the evening and free you in the morning" she immediately feels he "began to get on my nerves, he talked like a home renovator".

A very Jewish story, Love Life is funny, sad, annoying, sensual, argumentative and madly brilliant.

Canongate

$27.95

* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.