An Israeli family’s journey to Croatia throws up secrets that illuminate their pain in a beautiful exploration of the lingering power of history
David Grossman’s follow-up to the International Booker-winning A Horse Walks Into a Bar is a Russian doll of a novel, a book of secrets wrapped within secrets. It’s told by Gili, a film-maker, a damaged young woman who has already tried to end her life once. In a narrative that is teasingly digressive, threading back and forward between different time periods, between first- and third-person voices, we slowly learn the tragic story of Gili and her family, the way the brutal legacy of the 20th-century’s violence has written itself into the lives of these decent, wounded people.
It’s the early 1960s and Gili’s grandfather, Tuvia, lives with his sickly wife and their son, Rafael, on an unnamed kibbutz, a cheerful place of progressive politics and honest toil. The wife finally succumbs to her illness and Tuvia remarries, his new bride a recent Yugoslavian immigrant, Vera Novak, a widow and the mother of the beautiful Nina. Rafael falls in love with Nina, who is known at school as “the Sphinx” – a proud, distant, enigmatic figure. The two sleep together – although it’s soon clear that this initial encounter is more an act of rebellion on Nina’s part than anything else. It’s the start of a long and unequal relationship, with Rafael picking up the pieces whenever Nina falls apart. Then Gili is born and, unwilling to take on the mantle of mother, Nina flees.