The Seven Good Years: A Memoir

In his newest book of short stories and essays, The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, a title that references the Bible story of Joseph, who interprets Pharaoh's dream that there would be seven good years of plenty and then seven bad years of famine, Etgar Keret has written some of his best material. He is a prolific short story author with five other books to his name.  He writes about life in Israel, in a satirical, honest, truthful way.  His stories can seem to be complex, contradictory and sometimes ambiguous but always at the end of each story, Keret has delivered a message, though sometimes coded, his point of view.

In this book, Keret, writes about experiences that happen during the first seven years of his son, Lev's life and the last seven years of his Dad's life.  The last time he will be both a son and a father at the same time.  He talks about life as a father and how the birth of a child changes a person.  He writes about his relationship with his wife.  He also writes about everyday life in Israel.  He writes about his relationship with both his brother and his sister, who has become a strictly religious Orthodox Jew, the mother of 11 children.

In the essay titled, "Bombs Away" he gives you an idea what it is like to live in a country under fire.
He talks about a friend coming to visit who tells him that the Iranian leader wants the total destruction of Israel even at the expense of Iran itself.  His friend says why continue with life if we are going to be destroyed.  Etgar Keret explains to his wife what is the use of wasting time and money to fix up the house if we are all going to be decimated?  So they start to let everything go.  They do not do house repairs, his wife stops using the dishwasher and only washes dishes on an immediate need basis.  They stop mopping the floor and removing the garbage.  Then Keret has a dream that a peace treaty is signed with the Iranians.  "That hit her really hard.  Maybe S. was wrong", she whispered in terror.  "Maybe the Iranians won't attack.  And we'll be stuck with this filthy, rundown apartment, with debts and your students, whose papers you promised to give back in January and haven't even started to mark...."  Finally, he writes, his wife fell back to sleep but he could not.  "So I got up and swept the living room.  First thing tomorrow morning, I will call a plumber."

This is the clever and interesting way he starts a story off in one direction and then twists around to make a point he wants to bring home about the way his family experiences life as Israelis and as second generation Holocaust survivors.  He talks about his parents, his father who has recently passed away from cancer and his mother who remembers her life in World War II Poland.
He shares memories of his time spent with his father at the end of his life.  He talks about visiting Poland on book tours and purchasing a house in Warsaw, Poland to honor his mother.

He talks about bringing up a child in Israel and how everyday activities of life there are punctuated by the attacks of rockets and bombs.  How he and his wife try to keep life as normal as possible and also try to make staying safe a game, trying not to scare their son while explaining difficult everyday questions of a young child.

He writes about the feeling of writing his first story, which gives the reader insight into what he felt like being a young soldier int he Israeli army, "I wrote my first story twenty-six years ago, in one of the most heavily guarded army bases in Israel  I was nineteen then, a terrible, depressed soldier who
was counting the days to the end of his compulsory service.  I wrote the story during an especially long shift in an isolated, windowless computer room deep in the bowels of the earth.  I stood in the middle of that neon-lit freezing room and stared at the page of print.  I couldn't explain to myself why I wrote it or exactly what purpose it was supposed to serve.  The fact that I typed all those made up sentences was exciting, but also frightening.  I felt as if I had to find someone to read the story right away, and even if he didn't like it  or understand it, he could calm me down and tell me that writing it was perfectly all right, and not just another step on my road to insanity."

As the reader, you can really feel like you are there in Keret's shoes.  He writes with such passion and feeling communicating to readers outside Israel what it truly feels like to live under the pressures and uncertainty of everyday life there.  Etgar Keret brings the conflict in Middle East right into your living room, where you are sitting comfortably on the couch reading, he makes you feel just a little bit uncomfortable.

Fat Girl Walking

Ok, so the full title is Fat Girl Walking Sex, Food, Love and Being Comfortable in Your Skin...Every Inch Of It.  This book with the mouthful of a title was written by Brittany Gibbons which she then also clarifies as Brittany Herself.

This was not a book I had heard about or read reviews about...it just jumped off the shelf at me while scanning the shelves for other books.  The title caught my eye and how could I  resist.

Ok so this is a fun book to read if you need a break in the  literature you're reading.
It is not only light but frivolous.  There are some funny vignettes, but unless you know Brittany
personally, I am not sure how important to know about her life as a heavy young person and what
it is like being over weight through high school and college.  I was looking to see if I could relate to her or if she was offering some great advice to those of us who are also in the same weight class.

She is clever and witty...she has made a success of her life with a husband and three children, a TED talk and now a book.  In the end weight isn't the deciding factor for happiness or success.  But I still would like to lose those last 10 pounds ....I think I would be happier.

House of Thieves

Charles Belfoure does not disappoint in this second novel.  Quickly on the heels of his amazingly written and well received novel The Paris Architect, Belfoure has wowed me again.  There is certainly a similar theme running through this story about an architect who seems to have no option but to compromise his ethical beliefs and use his knowledge of architecture for evil.

In this novel you are drawn into the world of New York in 1886.  There is a clear division between the wealthy society life around Central Park and the underworld of life in the Tenderloin and Bowery districts of the City.  The Cross family are distant, relatively poor relations to the famed Knickerbocker society.  These families comprise the descendants of the original Dutch founders of the New Amsterdam.  John Cross, a successful architect and his wife Helen, a society wife live with their three children, George, a Harvard graduate,  Julia, a debutante and Charlie the youngest brother.

In an effort to help his son George out of a gambling debt, John Cross gets involved with the underworld gang, Kent's Gents, led by James T. Kent.  Kent is a well-bred, Princeton educated man from a wealthy mercantile family in Baltimore.  He trained as a doctor, but found that he got a adrenaline rush from committing crimes.  He runs an extensive crime organization.  Cross is just the type of partner he has been looking for.  With Cross' knowledge of architecture his gang can increase their portfolio.

With wonderful descriptive prose Belfoure creates both the elite social society and their whirlwind high living party world and the colorful back streets underworld.  He brings out the moral dilemmas that face both the people with everything and the people with nothing.  He develops the characters so well you are not sure who is justified and who you think is guilty.  As an architect himself, Belfoure has the insight and imagination to bring to the written page a character that designs buildings and then how to use that knowledge to outwit the security systems of that time period.

This is the beginning of the Pinkerton guard force and the security systems we use today.