Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
(Sorry for the reposting and then taking down and then reposting. This book I feel I owe something to...) You cannot point out a star to someone without putting your other hand on his shoulder.David Grossman wrote To The End Of The Land while his second eldest son was serving in the military. He wrote the novel as if doing so would protect him. It didn't save his life. The quote from the New York Times Book Review on the cover says "One of those few novels that feels as though they have made a d...
At first I struggled a bit with this book: it took me more than 80 pages to get into the story, but what followed after that was unparalleled and heart breaking. Why did I love this book?1. With Ora as his protagonist Grossman has sketched a "big", primeval woman: mother, lover, mistress at the same time. That sounds silly and of course very gender-coloured, I know, but this character really captivated me. Ora is powerful, hypersensitive, very obsessed with life, but often also very weak, blind,...
I really struggled with this one, and to a certain extent I feel like I am giving four stars because respect must be paid, to Grossman as a novelist at the height of his powers using all his craft to create a formally perfect and emotionally searing masterpiece, to Grossman as a father who somehow managed to take some small piece of his loss and transform it into art, to Grossman as a rational thinking caring man in a place where rationality and caring are at best perilously endangered. And so r...
Tale by Israeli author, ant-settlement protester whose son was killed in the army shortly before he finishes the book. The story is far from flawless: the first 50 pages are incoherent (supposedly representing the fever of the three characters which is itself a metaphor for the war fever of Israel but it makes this piece unreadable); clunky in structure with the first 50 pages followed by a whole subplot about Ora and her family’s Palestinian driver Sami (she unthinkingly gets him to drive Ofer
What an entrancing introduction to the work of acclaimed, progressive Israeli novelist David Grossman, whose son died fighting in the conflict with Lebanon in 2006. Though Grossman wrote much of this novel before that tragedy, it fully informs and casts its shadow over the narrative. Grossman, in a sense, had been writing the book to protect his son, just as his protagonist Ora goes on a desperate hike with her former lover in the Galilee to avoid any bad news related to her son, Ofer (who must
This may be one of the best books I've ever read. No, that seems to contain some doubt. This IS one of the most amazing books I've ever read. I have been sleep deprived for a week because I could not put it down until long after exhaustion set in. It is set in Isreal (it's translated from Hebrew) and is about Ora, whose son's military service is extended a month just as a campaign against Lebanon begins. Ora makes a pact, a deal, where if the notifiers can't find her, then her son can't die-- so...
I keep taking deep breaths trying to figure out how to say and what to say about this book. It is heavy throughout, without any comic relief or lifts; it is wrenching, soul-searching, life-affirming. It hurts so much sometimes that I needed to set it aside and take breathers and remind myself that this was not happening to me, although when this happens in the world it happens to us all. It is unimaginable and yet 100% possible and real. I walked every mile of this journey in Ora's shoes.My love...
David Grossman, one of Israel’s most acclaimed writers, has written a novel of extraordinary power about family life—the greatest human drama—and the cost of war.Three people meet in 1967, with injuries suffered in the Six Day War.Thirty three years later there is another war and the son of Ora has served his time but re-enlists. She leaves her home because she does not want to be there if THEY come (THEY would tell her that her son has been killed). She decides to leave home for a month-long hi...
3.5 stars. See here for a good review. Unfortunately, the book leaves too many open threads. And, as mentioned in here, it takes a long time before the story begins to make sense. Being old enough to remember the Yom Kippur war, I was nevertheless surprised, judging from the book, how close the enemies came to destroy Israel. I guess, in the end, Kissinger and Sharon saved the IDF's bacon.
Despite Nicole Krauss’s ridiculously glowing review, I never felt this book was powerful, shattering or unflinching. Ora is a middle-aged Israeli mother of two who flees to the Galilean countryside when her youngest son Ofer volunteers for combat in a conflict taking place in 2000. She is desperate to escape any news of the battle and her son’s fate, so she brings an old friend Avram along with her on a trek through the wilderness. The entire novel is basically Ora’s reflection on her son, her f...
I've been wanting to read this book ever since it came out three years ago. I kept putting it off and finally formed the world's smallest possible reading group with one other person, a woman from one of my regular reading groups. We set a date to discuss it and encouraged each other along. I am so glad we did that. Ruth is Jewish and has visited Israel twice. She is the mother of two grown sons, as am I. We met for lunch and talked about the book for three hours!To The End Of The Land is about
This book was WONDERFULUPDATE: 5 years later: *August 2015*A friend 'Liked' this review yesterday. My body felt frozen - I had to remember to breath. Honestly, I have never been more 'shocked' -'frozen' with an ending to a book than this one. I was a mess. It was not a happy ending--but I still had no idea --NONE --of what I was about to discover. I was devastated. At first I couldn't move --then I cried -then I couldn't move some more. I remember at some point going up to the trails, alone, for...
ETA: I better add this. If you are looking for a sweet pat ending look elsewhere. This book does not have a fairy tale ending.I absolutely LOVE this book. Add some explosion claps. I have read about half. THIS is a love story. What kind of love? Love for your child, your first and your second. Love for your partner in life. Husband or someone else, doesn't matter. There is a really weird triangle love relationship, but the further and further I go into the book the more it all makes sense. A...
I am in Paris, and have been in Berlin and Barcelona for 3 weeks before that.I have bought SO many books, and visited the best bookstores in the world: two of which were in Berlin.Today I went to Shakespeare and co, and got some contemporary French translations, so I need to plough through this so I can get started on the 15 other books im lugging around from my trip purchases. Hard to carry for 7 weeks!.........Just finished this an I am too emotional to write about it a) because the book total...
What this book could have been like with a decent editor! I read it on my Kindle, so I have no idea how many printed pages it was, but it felt like the reading equivalent of the Bataan Death March. And since so much of the narrative unfolds during a hike across Israel by two of the main characters, the comparison to the Bataan Death March felt pretty apt. Which isn't to say there aren't things to like about this book. The accounts of the events of the lives of the 2 sons from birth through child...
I actually wanted to re-read the ending before I wrote this review, I did and although it is not your proverbial happy ending, it is so very fitting. When one reads a book like this, a book that I would probably never had picked up unless one of my goodread friends had been reading it and just posting how much she was loving this book. It is so wonderful when this site does just these kind of things.This book is one that I will probably think about for a long time. We first meet the three main c...
This is one of the best books I've read on what it means to live in Israel. I’m not the first to write that To the End of the Land is a shattering, soul-changing book. While Mr. Grossman was working on the manuscript, his son Uri was called up to serve in Operation Cast Lead. He was killed as he attempted to rescue another group of soldiers. Grief and loss haunt every page. For three years, Ora has been anxiously awaiting her son Ofer’s discharge from the Israeli army. Together, they’ve been pla...
I really enjoyed reading this book. I think one of the main reasons is that I have read so many based in the UK or USA and therefore reading this book was a refreshing change. It may seem odd to use the word refreshing considering the subject matter but I found that too was refreshing or rather the way in which it was presented. This book was challenging in a good way it was also confronting at times in a gentle rather than brutal way, it was also joyous and saddening. The writing made me feel l...
This book is like getting a punch in the gut. I have a feeling the answer to relationships, family or romantic, lies somewhere deep within the pages of this book. The power of the mind isn't in magical thinking to prevent death [but who hasn't made a bargain in their mind for something they really don't want to happen] but in destroying relationships or deceiving ourselves.The underlining current I keep coming back to is where Avram gave up on himself and forced Ilan to take all the things he co...
I feel a bit guilty about not having become more absorbed in this novel. Several of my friends, whose taste in literature I respect, felt Grossman's "To the End of the Land" was the best thing since sliced bread (since I have started spending time in France, this expression baffles me--was sliced bread really a step forward? Anyway . . . ) . It was for me slow and even at times tedious. The premise is enticing. A young Israeli, who has already fulfilled his compulsory military service, volunteer...