TO THE END OF THE LAND By David Grossman | Translated by Jessica Cohen | Knopf |
576 pages | $26.95
According to recent research a significant portion of Israel’s population has
been exposed to traumatic events at sometime or another throughout the country’s
62 years, with quite a significant number of people going on to develop
post-traumatic stress disorder.
This little-known and often-ignored fact
comes across extremely clearly in author David Grossman’s latest novel To the
End of the Land, a highly reflective and sometimes garish commentary on Israeli
life, culture, history and the collective mind-set.
In the book, whose
Hebrew title is Isha Borahat Mibsora (A Woman Flees [Bad] Tidings), the main
protagonist, Ora, certainly suffers from some form of PTSD and Avram, her former
lover and father of one of her two sons, definitely has an extreme version of
it.
Grossman, who wrote the book while his two sons successively served
in the IDF and finished the final draft after the younger, Uri, was tragically
killed in combat during the Second Lebanon War, is also no doubt in a state of
emotional trauma. And, from the tears I shed while reading this book, I’m
guessing that I too might have some degree of PTSD.
Truthfully, To the
End of the Land shook me to the core of my being, not only for its unforgiving
observations of the Israeli mentality and communal brainwashing or because it
revisits almost all the wars and conflicts since the founding of the state, but
for the mere fact that it embodies every parent’s worst nightmare: the fear of
losing a son in battle.
Moreover, it fearlessly examines that loss
weighed against a nationalistic ideology that you aren’t entirely convinced you
agree with.
The plot focuses on Ora as she decides she must somehow flee
the army “notifiers” who will surely come knocking on her door with news of the
death of her youngest son Ofer, now taking part in a hyped-up military
offensive.
Ofer, who had been set for his final release from the army,
unquestioningly heads back to participate in the “campaign,” leaving Ora
climbing the walls and eerily imagining the flashing lights of an army convoy
outside her window preparing to bestow her with bad tidings.
If she is
not there to answer the door, Ora reasons, if they cannot find her, then there
can be no bad news, right? Her anxiety is maddening and her only option is to
flee her Jerusalem apartment and head up to the northern tip of the country to
start a hike that she and Ofer had been planning to take after his release. On
the way she picks up, literally, her former friend and possible soul mate Avram,
a severely traumatized war veteran, who is Ofer’s biological father.
In
the book’s real time, the story takes place as Ora and Avram hike their way back
from “the end of the land” to Jerusalem, with Ora along the way therapeutically
sharing with Avram stories about Ofer, the son he has refused to acknowledge
since conception.
As this takes place on the surface, Grossman also
chronologically tackles each of the country’s wars starting with the Six Day War
in 1967 up to the present day, where he dares to delve into the complex
relationship between Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and
Palestinians.
Perhaps one of the most haunting episodes is the taxi ride
taken by Ora during her escape from Jerusalem. After insensitively using Sami,
her longtime “friend” and Arab driver, to take her and Ofer to the gathering
point for the offensive, Ora begs him to take her for a second time that
day.
He eventually agrees on condition they make a stop in an Arab
neighborhood in Jaffa. With an extremely sick Palestinian child suddenly thrust
into her care, Ora vicariously experiences the extreme human suffering of
victims from the other side of this conflict. Even though this happens early on
in the book, the silent suffering of so many people in a moonlit Arab school is
an image that is hard to shake.
It is not only the intrinsic
relationships between Israelis and Arabs or even between humans and war that
Grossman expertly explores, he also delves into the complicated energies between
men and women.
While at times it is obvious that rough and tough Ora – as
a fictional female character – has really been created by a man, the complicated
love triangle she shares with Avram and Ilan, the husband who has just left her,
manages to propel the story along and push it into a realm much deeper than
fiction.
It is this shift from fiction into reality that brings the book
to life as the reader shares Grossman’s own personal tragedy in losing his son.
In the closing pages, a note from the author about Uri’s death reads: “I had the
feeling – or rather, a wish – that the book I was writing would protect
him.”
He goes on: “After we finished sitting shiva, I went back to the
book. Most of it was already written. What changed, above all, was the echo of
the reality in which the final draft was written.”
The twist that a story
about a woman escaping the bad tidings brought by army notifiers somehow became
real for Grossman and his wife, Michal, has created an international buzz around
To the End of the Land. Reviewed over the past few weeks in publications around
the globe, Grossman has received glowing acclaim for this
work.
Obviously, right-wingers in this country and the pro-Israel lobby
worldwide might find fault with his musings or observations of Israeli culture
and public attitudes but at many points throughout the work he accurately sums
up our collective brainwashed mind-set. This comes through especially clearly in
the scene where Ora describes Ofer’s meeting point for the military campaign:
“It is all a huge, irredeemable mistake. It seems to her that as the moment of
separation approaches, the families and the soldiers fill with arid merriment,
as if they have inhaled a drug meant to dull their
comprehension...”
Grossman is brave in attempting to confront such
jingoism and, of course, is even braver in confronting his own loss. One of the
reviewers wrote that this revered author deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his work
and after making my way through this intensely reflective mosaic of a novel,
that might not be far off the mark.
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