Husband and Wife
When finally I put down
this novel I was trembling. Described in The
Scotsman as an “emotional white-knuckle ride,” this story plunges the
reader deep into the heart of a rapidly disintegrating marriage in present-day
Jerusalem. In prose so accomplished, so stirring, at times so achingly
beautiful that one is tempted to drop one’s guard, to sit back, relax, and
surrender oneself to its rhythms, Shalev is relentless in her determination to
draw the reader inside the very skin of her protagonist, a mother and social
worker named Na’ama Newman, as she registers the bruising daily trauma—each
banal and horrific detail—of her imploding love life and family.
The simple plot is set in
motion one morning when Na’ama’s husband, Udi, a healthy, active man, wakes up
at home after a solitary outing in the desert to discover that he cannot move
his legs. Unable to
find a physical, medical explanation for his paralysis, they are forced to
recognize that the problem lies elsewhere, in their marriage itself, their
once-happy life together attacked from within by an aggressive emotional cancer.
From there, their relationship quickly spirals out of control, fueled—as
fire by gasoline—by years of pent-up disappointment, longing, recrimination,
and fear. Told from Na’ama’s acute, often startling perspective, Husband and Wife is the story of one
woman’s desperate, exasperating, sometimes valiant attempt to save her marriage
and family, to check the momentum of what at points seems as terrible, as implacable
as fate. While the novel might
just as well have been set in Shanghai, Durban, or Madrid, so little do we see
of modern Israel, so broadly human is the story’s appeal, one cannot help but suspect
that this tangled and septic relationship is somehow reflective of the anguish
and violence of Jerusalem itself.
Grim,
depressing as this sounds—and is (Why would anyone but a masochist read such
stuff? Or recommend it?), the novel is also singularly exhilarating in its pacing
and candor, in its fearless—thereby hopeful—depiction of relationships and
love. “Husband and Wife is not a book for the faint-hearted,” writes
critic Jamie Jauncey, “but for anyone prepared…to experience with almost
hallucinatory vividness the complex and conflicting emotions of a modern woman
dealing with a disintegrating relationship, there can be no finer opportunity.” If, like Kafka, you believe that
a book should be an axe for the frozen sea inside us, then pick up a copy of
this one. It will shake you to
your core.
Zerya Shalev was born at Kibbutz Kinneret. She has an MA in
Biblical studies and works as a literary editor at Keter Publishing House.
Shalev has published five novels, a book of poetry and a children`s book. Her
novels Love Life, Husband and Wife, and Late Family (Terra) have received
critical acclaim both in Israel and abroad and have been bestsellers in several
countries. Love Life has been
included in Der Spiegel`s prestigious list of "20 Best Novels in World
Literature" over the last 40 years, together with the work of Saul Bellow,
J. M. Coetzee and Philip Roth. Husband
and Wife is included in the French Fnac list of the "200 Best Books of
the Decade." Shalev has been awarded the Book Publishers Association’s
Gold and Platinum Prizes, the Corine Prize (Germany, 2001), the Amphi Award
(France, 2003), the ACUM Prize three times (1997, 2003, 2005), and the French
Wizo Prize (2007). Husband and Wife was also nominated for
the Femina Prize (France, 2002). A feature film of Love Life, produced in Germany, was released in 2008. Her books
have been published abroad in 25 languages. Husband and Wife (בעל ואישה) was
translated by Dalya Bilu and is published by Grove Press, New York.
Peter Adam Nash
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