Heleni

She may be called the “topsy-turvy Aunt” but she’s not crazy. Heleni admits that she is a free spirit, even a bit odd, yet she is always amusing and excellent company. And anyway, who cares if she is strange? Eviatar certainly doesn’t, at least not after the first day he spends with her.

Sent to spend his Hanukkah vacation in Tel Aviv, Eviatar doubts he will survive an upside-down week with his young aunt. For her part, Heleni longs to please, but she reminds him again and again, “I don’t know the first thing about kids,” which turns out to mean that she treats him as an adult. She lives in a huge old house that is empty, full of family memories, and about to be demolished. Instead of being “responsible” and confronting the authorities about the demolition, Heleni shuttles Eviatar around in taxicabs, tells him the story of Helen of Troy, and takes him to the beach in the rain. For the first time, he chooses his own meal at a restaurant, watches a foreign film, and walks through a mansion with its own private forest.

As mishap follows fun and fancy, he gets to know his aunt and longs to protect her, both from the demolition crew threatening to destroy her house and from her numerous suitors. Heleni’s admirers are a motley group: a hard-drinking artist who takes them dancing, a childhood friend turned into a successful lawyer, the friendly policeman who arrests them…and, as the reader suspects, her young nephew himself. As Eviatar is mesmerized by his aunt’s grey-green eyes, readers are drawn into the whimsical tale of their racy week together.