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| Yehudit Hendel |
The Empty Place |
| Stories |
Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 2007. 114 pp.
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From the book
I used to meet him sometimes in the street or the park opposite my house. Over the years we became friends in a way, and he would nod to me as old friends do, and perhaps we were old friends because he had apparently lived here for years, like me. Over the years he also told me that his name was Haim-Shmuel. His real name was Shmuel, but he had been very sick and had added the name Haim-Life-in order to recover and have a long life.
Recently I met him in the park. I sat on a bench in the shade of tall treetops, and he asked whether he could sit next to me.
Certainly, gladly, I said.
I`m glad to meet you too, he said. After all, we’ve known each other for years.
Gladly, I replied.
Suddenly he stood up and began to dance.
He dances like a monkey, the children in the park said, laughing.
He stood under a tree as though facing a storm. It seemed to me that the treetop bent over, as if trying to protect him, and he jumped and hid behind it. He stood there for a long time, hugging the trunk with his two arms, pressing himself against it. And it seemed to me a solitary tree in the park, and he, hugging it hard, was waiting.
Synopsis
Written by one of Israel`s major authors after a serious illness, this powerful collection of stories gives us a rare look at the loneliness of old age and the empty space that both surrounds and lies ahead of them.
By the side of Hendel`s protagonists crouches imminent death, devoid of any romanticism. Yet the obsessive characters that Hendel depicts here, and the ones that most fire the imagination, are the most realistic she has ever created-the man who watches over his wife`s empty place on the park bench; Rimona whose lover died while they were making love; the man who dances incessantly in Dubnov Garden, for he will die the moment he stops; and Arnona-in a superbly grotesque story-who is dragged unwillingly to a party at the end of which Yonatan does not know whether she is in the emergency room or the morgue.
Tel Aviv`s Dubnov Garden, in which all this takes place, is a flower-filled garden of loneliness. Yet Hendel`s writing never rings false, nor does she allow her characters any saving illusion. Of the many books that deal with death and attempt to fill it with meaning, this is one that succeeds-in emptying it.
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From the press
The book`s main virtue is the courage, or even the cheek to write a book like this...The Empty Place clearly expresses the author`s greatness.
Maariv
The Empty Place is woven like fine lace, deriving its literary and emotional strength from its subtlety.
Yedioth Ahronoth
Hendel opens doors into regions of the soul... near the source, where the waters are clear, clean and able to quench the thirsting soul.
Makor Rishon
Hendel`s collection of short stories is one of the most beautiful and lucid texts I`ve read recently. It restores faith in the short story.
Time Out Tel Aviv
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