2012 book 194

Amos Oz's Elsewhere, Perhaps
I first read this book in a Jewish lit class in college and it stayed with me to the point that when I later studied abroad in Israel and met a girl named Inbal, one of the first things I said to her was "Your name means the clapper of a bell!" (This must have been very weird but she kindly befriended me anyway.) (That knowledge comes from a recurring motif in the book, though I no longer recall what it symbolizes.) Anyway, I deeply loved this book but haven't read it in a long time (since before I started this blog in 2004, in fact), mainly because I was afraid it wouldn't hold up. Luckily, for the most part, the story of the goings-on at a kibbutz in the 70s does hold up, due primarily to Oz's clever 1st-person plural narrative voice. And of course, I personally still find the themes of Jewish/Israeli Old World/New World conflict interesting (not to mention all the gossip and shenanigans that go on). A-.