It's difficult to give a book by David Grossman just one star. I thought that his books "Someone to Run With", and "To the End of the Land" were excellent and loved them both. I had a heck of a time following all the different stories within stories in "See Under Love", and had to force myself to finish it. I have this nagging concern that there are ways in which this book trivialized the Holocaust. For well-done books about the Holocaust, "The Book Thief", "Stones from the River", and "Every Ma...

This was a real trudge for me. I gave it three stars because there were aspects of it that I found really interesting. My favorite part of the book was definitely the first section - it was downhill from there but the last section was very good as well. This book is a translation and I thought that was done extremely well too. But there were parts of it that really dragged for me - whole sections even.

In the first part of this book, Momik - the young son of Holocaust survivors, born and raised in Israel - says that grownups sometimes call him "alter kop", which in Yiddish means "old head". And he is, in a way, an old man in the body of a child. He is intelligent and painfully serious; he has no friends his own age but is drawn to the aging and deranged Holocaust survivors who populate his neighborhood in Jerusalem (which, believe me, is a creepy enough town as it is). But though wise beyond h...

The first chapter, "Momix," is brilliant. I suppose it raised my hopes impossibly high, for in the end I could not finish the novel. I stopped around p. 130 of chapter two, "Bruno." I have never seen a novel collapse more spectacularly--almost from one page to the next--as I have here. "Bruno" is so poetic and fanciful as to be unreadable. It stopped me cold when I tried to read it several years ago, and it stopped me cold on this second reading, too. What does the sea have to do with the Holoca...

When i first read “Someone to Run With”, i knew i would not rest until i finished reading all Grossman’s books. This one did not disappoint. I found myself crying at the very end of the book. Without a doubt is difficult to speak about Holocaust…, but is is extremely hard to speak about it to the new generation. Tha’s what Grossman did in this book. All of the characters and the plot make it so much interesting to read. So, to me, Grossman did an amazing job in this book.I really recommend this

I read the first 100-page chapter of this book in one stunned sitting the summer my son was born. I don't normally read Holocaust related fiction, but See Under: Love captivated me and tore me up. I lent the book to a dear friend who couldn't get past the opening pages, so I guess it's not for everyone, but for those with a tolerance or liking for magical realism, unusual plotting, and (truly) heartbreaking genius.

In this powerful novel by one of Israel’s most prominent writers, Momik, the only child of Holocaust survivors, grows up in the shadow of his parents’ history. Determined to exorcise the Nazi “beast” from their shattered lives and prepare for a second holocaust he knows is coming, Momik increasingly shields himself from all feeling and attachment. But through the stories his great-uncle tells him—the same stories he told the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp—Momik, too, becomes “infected w...

This book shouldn't hold together as well as it does. So many disparate elements that, to me, shouldn't be attempting to work in cohesion. Child of holocaust survivors/cynical israeli author attempting to write about the holocaust whilst straightening his own life/post modern travails/camp inmate writer going all 1001 and nights on a camp commandant....in a lesser writer's hands this story woulve collapsed into an amorphous mess, falling under the weight ofg tis own ambition. But Grossman succee...

A kid growing up in Israel in the shadow of the dark memories of all the Holocaust survivors around him - they don´t really talk about it and so Momik starts to build his own idea of the Nazi Beast. I found it hard to follow and put it down several times.

He realized he had spent most of his life as a daring trapeze artist on that high scaffold, and that he had always been careful not to look down, because looking downward and inward would have frightened him and made him recognize, much to his sorrow, that he wasn't a trapeze artist but a jailor. That somewhere along the line force of habit, fatigue, and negligence had turned him into the accomplice of the people with their hands joined around him.My twin said something the other day about her p...

This is awesome. Bruno Schulz is a character. An insane stream of consciousness section. A son of Holocaust survivor imagination-addled masterpiece. Read it in an Holocaust in Fiction class in 1992.

Some of the great lines I took note of while reading this book: -He fears only the great searchlights that converge inside and chstise him to be-like-everybody-else, to live the gray life he can never redeem with a touch of his pen.- in the books he read he sought the one phrase, the pearl, which launched the writer on a voyage hundreds of pages long.-I want to write, but I can't get rid of my blocks and inhibitions. Every step becomes impossible because of the half step that must precede it.-A

Through about 40 pages, pretty good stuff, strong sense of place which is actually disorienting at first, reminding me of Gunter Grass (which I loved, many moons ago) and Safron Foer (which I hated, much more recently)...

Feb. 2016: I've recently revised my rating of this book from 4 t0 5 stars because in thinking over what I've read in the past several years this book -- which I bought when it came out and didn't pick up for over a decade -- turns out to be one that I keep returning to in my mind. That sort of blows me away because it was so difficult to navigate; it's interesting to see how much of it has stayed with me. So, in deference to that, I'm revising my rating. Otherwise, my review is unchanged.******T...

Absolutely blew me away. Heartbreaking, surreal, wonderful writing.

A tough book to read, divided in a few parts, each different from the rest. The isuue is one that interests me personally as well: the first generation in Israel, second to the holocaust.

I spent the longest amount of time I’ve spent on a book I’ve been reading for pleasure since I was a child reading this one, mainly because it was so powerful—and at times, difficult—that I’d have to put it down for days at time after reading like twenty pages. But it’s such a beautiful, poignant book...about how to be an Israeli, a writer, and a human after something like the Holocaust. Heavy, heavy read. But worth it. I really recommend!

there is lots of literature on the holocaust but this is by far my favorite holocaust representation. it is so, so impressive. mostly I say this because of the first section (there are four total), which is an 80-page story about a little boy named Momik. you could totally read this part without reading the rest of the book - it stands alone, and is just plain GOOD in that breathtaking way that short pieces sometimes are. the second section is very challenging to read and makes very little sense...

Absolutely mind-reeling. David Grossman continues to knock me off my feet in the most amazing ways. To the End of the Land is still my favorite of his, likely only winning over this one given how often disturbed I was in reading this. heh... In any case, I'd say Grossman is near impossible to beat when it comes to matters of sheer humanity. Flipping brilliant.

I really tried but couldn't get more than half way through this book. I like a lot of Grossman's other work, so you win some you lose some.