Inland Lighthouses

Three novellas, constructed as three exciting journeys to real places, represent emotional journeys to the depths of memory. In all three novellas the heroes abandon their wild, perhaps dangerous, dreams in favor of a stable and secure lifestyle. In the first novella, which exhibits both a rare psychological sensitivity and the ability to critically observe social situations, Katzir describes the private odyssey of Reuven as he is about to retire. He goes to Tel Aviv and wanders the city’s streets. His life flashes before his eyes, along with the Israel of years gone by, the Israel before the Rabin assassination and before the (right wing) Likud Party was elected. The novella, which includes an attempted suicide at sea, is an allegory of the Zionist dream. As in The Odyssey, where the mythical hero is “born” from the sea’s waves, Reuven returns to shore to seek out the widow of his friend and partner in the Moroccan immigration operation.

In the second novella, a married woman, aspiring to become a painter, returns to her home city of Haifa in an effort to reunite with her past. There she meets her painting teacher, with whom she had had an affair. While in Haifa, she also helps her aunt, now at the end of her life, commit suicide. The dealings with death and old age and the memory of her good friend who has disappeared, bring the heroine back to life and instill hope that there is both continuity, and hope for a new child.

The third novella tells of the writer’s journey into her family’s past, where she discovers the story of her grandmother’s passionate love for a deceitful man during the 1930s in Eretz Israel and Europe. The failed love affair brings the heroine’s grandmother to near death but eventually she, along with the other heroes in this impressive volume, regains her strength and reclaims her hold on life.