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Title: Open Heart by Abraham B. Yehoshua ISBN: 0-385-26793-2 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A richly rewarding read
Comment: With this novel, Yehoshua again returns to exploring the themes of Love and Identity, this time in a more intimate setting. The impossible, almost grotesque love of a young doctor (Benjy) to the middle-aged mother of his patient is described in detailed realism, yet the story is imbued with a sense of mysticism and mystery. Identities and feelings are exchanged and mixed through blood transfusions, and Love invades one's being as if from an external source. Yehoshua captures the profound mystery permeating "regular" people and situations. The many faces of Love, as well as its imitations, limitations and glaring absences are examined without flinching. Benjy is torn between desolate loneliness and identity-devouring symbiosis; the alternative path of co-existence with autonomy (offered by the independent Michaela) seems to him somehow incompatible with Love.
The Hebrew title of this novel is "The Return from India"; passages infused with Eastern spirituality and the transmigration of souls contrast with minute, surgically-precise medical descriptions and all-too-earthly human ambitions and professional rivalries. The narrative unfolds slowly, luxuriously, allowing the reader to become completely immersed in Yehoshua's world. A wonderful, richly rewarding book.
Rating: 3
Summary: Disappointing, but worth reading
Comment: I read Open Heart after having taken a course with AB Yehoshua and after having read Mr. Mani, A Late Divorce, and The Lover, and found it the least satisfactory of these four novels. (I would give the other 3 five stars.) I found the narrator annoying and his relationship with the fifty year old woman unconvincing. I think Yehoshua is brilliant at depicting all kinds of people except middle aged women, and I don't think he really understood how a woman would react under such circumstances. However, I loved the descriptions of India, and thought the prose style in general made the book worth reading.
Rating: 2
Summary: Very disappointing, although I didn't mind the ending.
Comment: I read this book because I loved Mr. Mani. Unfortunately Yehoshua seems to be trying to earn the "Israeli Faulkner" title a little too much by this plodding, lifeless thing. I figure that there has to be major symbolism since the characters are so awkward, but the closest I could come was that the old lady(mother figure) who captures the heart of our protagonist is a life sustaining goddess while the wife is a goddess of destruction and the child (Shiva) is both together. So when the narrator is left with just the child at the end, he's managed to integrate both sides of his soul. I like that part. The rest of the book bored me. I couldn't stand the narrator and the scenes with him and the 50 year old love interest served only to remind me of Umberto Eco's parody of Lolita entitled Granita where the young man went after nursing home patients. Eco only took 8 pages while Yehoshua takes 500 pages. Read this book only if you are a diehard fan and you are willing to accept a lot of Yehoshua's babbling. If you are only curious about Yehoshua, read Mr. Mani.
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Title: A Late Divorce by A.B. Yehoshua ISBN: 0156494477 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 07 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Mr. Mani by A.B. Yehoshua ISBN: 0156627698 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 07 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Journey to the End of the Millennium - A Novel of the Middle Ages by A.B. Yehoshua ISBN: 0156011166 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 15 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Lover by A.B. Yehoshua ISBN: 0156539128 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 07 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua, Hillel Halkin ISBN: 0151006539 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 03 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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