FICTION: EILEEN BATTERSBYreviews To the End of the LandBy David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen, Jonathan Cape, 592pp, £18.99
JUST WHEN A MOTHER begins to settle into relief as her second son returns from his military service in war-torn Israel he volunteers for a major offensive. Ora, emotional, impulsive, reactive, has never taken anything for granted; how could she? Her life has worked out oddly. Left on her own after the birth of her first child, she became pregnant by an old friend, Avram, her first love, but Ilan, the father of her first son, did return, and Ora has raised her two sons in a family with him. But that unit has finally broken down; her husband has left again, and her first son, Adam, is currently travelling with him.
The Israeli writer David Grossman, the soul of reason, is a major artist; his books, shaped by urgent charm and conversational ease, are stories written from the heart by an intelligence that is wise, sympathetic and always fair. Since the publication in English in 1989 of his second novel, See Under: Love(1986), he has, along with his countryman Amos Oz, chronicled the sad lament that is Israel's history. Yet Grossman, never quite as polemical as Oz, though no less a commentator, has shaped fictions such as The Book of Intimate Grammar (1991; translation 1994), The Zigzag Kid(1994; translation 1997) and Someone to Run With(2000, translation 2003) that are about love, hope, dreams and sorrows; less political, more human.
This big novel, just short of 600 pages, is a mother's vigil written by a grieving father. Ora's dread, the loss of a son, is Grossman's reality. How to read a novel that is so close to the author's life? It is not easy, but then To the End of the Landis not easy. It is a dense living, breathing narrative; the characters stumble, shout and weep. Most of all they remember. For all the reality and the weight of fact Grossman is a disciplined storyteller capable of stepping back and allowing art to take over from personal agony.
Even if I had not met Grossman a few times and spoken with him, even if I had not listened to him as he spoke to me about Uri, his Israeli soldier son, who knew about this novel while it was being written but was killed in action before it was completed, I would like to think I would have recognised that this is a great novel by a great writer. David Grossman is a good man, an honest witness; he must be heeded; his novels should be read.
The opening pages of To the End of the Landbristle with whispered conversation: Avram and Ora, as a teenage boy and girl, patients in a hospital, begin a friendship that tiptoes towards tentative love. It is the most difficult part of the book. The dialogue bounces back and forth; teen bravado, intended by the speakers to suggest confidence, not wariness, is lobbed like so many tennis balls. It is 1967. "I think they're winning." "Who?" "The Arabs." "No way." "They've occupied Tel Aviv." "Who told you that?" "I don't know. Maybe I heard it."
The boy comes to the girl at night, to talk; only that. The girl is recovering from a fever; she talks in her sleep; she also sings, although it is more like shouting because of the nightmares she suffers. The boy is short, witty, full of fun, generous; the girl is beautiful and taller than him. In his generosity he brings another boy in to share the fun they have established.
The girl already knows about loss; her friend Ada died. Once, on a school trip, Ada had a stomach ache and announced she was going to die then and there. Ora wept. Ada didn’t die that time. “But when she really did, you know, I didn’t cry, I couldn’t. Everything in me completely dried up. I haven’t cried even once since she died.”
Grossman conveys the confidence, curiosity and nervous excitement of two teenagers, whispering in the dark in a hospital room. Then, one night, Avram pushes a wheelchair into her room. The noise wakes her. The boy in the chair, Ilan, is sleeping. He also has nightmares. Grossman locks three of his central characters into a bond that will stretch and contract, almost snap but always recover, assuming different shapes in the years to pass.
And pass they do, the years. Fast-forward to 2000 and Ora is facing a mother’s torment. The narrative is as simple as it is complicated. Her soldier son, Ofer, has returned only to leave again. She had planned for them to go on a long hike together, to celebrate his homecoming. Only she in her distress would have been so careless as to ask Sami, an Arab taxi driver, a family friend, to drive her and Ofer to his army camp. By now her husband has left her. She is older, more vulnerable and aware that she will not be able to stay at home, waiting to be informed that her son has been killed in action. Instead she decides to go off on the hike. She will leave her life by placing herself out of reach. She will not only avoid bad news; she will deflect it. Only she does not attempt her odyssey alone; instead she summons her old friend Avram. But he is no longer the lively boy of their shared past. Grotesquely damaged by war, he has retreated to a protective distance that has kept him away from Ora, who chose Ilan over him.
She coaxes Avram to come with her, and somehow they begin their trek. By drawing on her memories she conjures up her son Ofer for him. This young soldier becomes another major character, so vivid is his mother’s recall. By stages she becomes the young mother of Adam, her first son, struggling alone after Ilan had abandoned them.
Throughout the narrative Ora is caught between her two lovers, and also between her roles as a lover and a mother. Her moods shift from joy to despair to anger when she realises that Avram, though broken in body, is still capable of having a daughter with his current, much younger and devoted girlfriend.
Complications and connections, regrets and guilt drive the narrative as the secrets and subplots surface. Ora emerges as a woman far from perfect; very human. Grossman evokes a powerful physical essence of Israel as a country, a landscape battered by the past and the present insanity – in fact so vivid a sense of the countryside emerges that one reaches for a map. Yet in this book of memories the strongest response is that of being a parent watching in wonder as a baby becomes a man. Ora recalls every detail, the moments that make a history, form a life. Immense personal suffering has shaped his heartfelt novel, yet Grossman the artist has told a story that is far more about parenting than politics, more about life than lamentation.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Timesand author of Second Readings: 52 – From Beckett to Black Beauty(Liberties Press)
