What To Do About the Solomons

This month we offer two books about dysfunctional families.  As the famous Tolstoy quote goes,

“ Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Tolstoy also mentioned that there were several key aspects for a marriage to be happy.  Thinking about what makes a happy marriage and how those marriages affect the children they bring into the world we examine the novels we are reading this month.  So from that stepping off point we read about our What To Do About the Solomons by Bethany Ball.

While still here in the present day,  we meet Yakov Solomon, and his wife Vivienne.  They are patriarch and matriarch of the Solomon family.  They live on a kibbutz in Israel and are the parents of five grown children.  Keren is married to Guy Gever, and with their children continue to live on the kibbutz.  Guy works for his father-in-law.  Marc Solomon, married to Carolyn with their three sons all live in America.  He is a financial wizard who has found himself under suspicion in a money laundering scandal.  Shira is the divorced daughter who wanted to be a movie star. She goes off to America looking for adventure, leaving her 10 year old son home alone in their Israeli apartment, though she thinks he is staying with his father.   Dror, married and working alongside his father.  Finally,  Ziv the first born, who has been ostracized and left the family for Singapore where he lives, in a relationship, with another man.

As the story jumps around taking us from the present to the past, Israel to America and back we learn about the members of this modern day family.  Growing up on a kibbutz that now is having trouble staying in business.  How the lifestyle has changed, the children remembering the group living for the children, that all for one mentality, eating meals together, sleeping together.  Now today how things have changed,  they work for a common good, independently.  In America we follow Marc as he tries to achieve what he believes is the ultimate dream.  He survived the Israeli army training, where he took on the challenge of deepsea diving.  This accomplishment, which he felt would make him feel proud and make him feel whole is an important lesson from the novel,

“In Marc’s first lesson that no earthly thing can do that.  Not the money and success that come later: the university degrees, the blonde American wife, or the German sports car that takes him downtown where he makes a million dollars year profit.  He never forgets the cold dea spilling down the back of his wet suit.  Marc’s three blond American children will never understand his aversion to sea and sand.”

He is always looking for fulfillment.  It takes a lifetime to understand that substance of ambition is only a illusive shadow of what we thought we wanted.