A Woman in Jerusalem

A.B. Yehoshua

translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. Halban . London. 2006

After reading 'Friendly Fire' by the same author I've been looking forward to reading his earlier books. This one covers slightly similar territory; the almost metaphysical ramifications to life and terrorism in current day Israel. People are overcome with powerful unexplained emotions; snappy, moody and hysterical (in a really good way). Hysteria with subtlety and beauty.

"That's love's secret" the weasel continued as the vehicle slowed to take the hairpin bends. "There is no formula. Each person has to find the secret for himself. That's why Eros is neither god nor man. He's a daimon, thick-skinned, unwashed, barefoot, homeless, and poor - yet he links the human to the divine, the temporal to the eternal..."p.157

Curriculum Vitae

Yoel Hoffmann

translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. A new Directions Book. 2009

She was always right because by nature a woman is better constructed. She's music and she's the musician, and the man is little more than the person who stands at the musician's side and turns the pages. [section 23]

I've forgotten who the Huguenots were ( I think they were French Protestants). But without a doubt they clung to the earth so that Suzy Ortal- Kipnis could study them. [section 67]

Memoir in snatches mixed with imagination passages. Rambling in parts, other times clear and funny. Imagine Marcel Proust as a Zionist writing Habuki.

The Broken Shore

Peter Temple 2005 The Text Publishing Company

They ordered bacon and eggs a the truckstop on the edge of Cromarty. An anorexic girl with a moustache and a pink-caked pimple between her eyebrows brought the food. The eggs lay on tissue-paper bread, the yokes small and pasta coloured. Narrow pink streaks of meat could be seen in the grey pig fat. p 199

The Pedant in the Kitchen

Julian Barnes 2003 Atlantic Books , London

Julian is the pedant making fun of his cooking mishaps in a book of short stories. Funny, witty, relate able. I'm now a happy owner of a pressure cooker. Will no doubt have many of my own tales to tell.

(8) Never replace your tatty old Jane Grigson or Elizabeth David with a new version containing exactly the same text, even if it does now have picture (see 1). You will never use it and will go back to the original tatty paperback because it has your marginal notes and you rightly feel comfortable about it.p29