Snow

A man and a woman stand face-to-face in a snow-covered New York street. Once, they were lovers. Now, he is married to another woman and lives in Israel, and she is married to another man and lives in Manhattan. Nevertheless, she has contacted him and asked for a meeting, after years of being apart. Why did she do this? How did their love affair begin, and why did it end? And is there a chance that it can be resuscitated?

Ronit Matalon wrote archetypal variations of the family novel genre that have become classics of Israeli literature. She wrote tangled, dark and amusing love stories. Snow is a novella that she began in 2002 but never completed. It is an attempt to integrate two stories: one about a relationship between a woman and a man, probing the connections in adult romantic love; the other about family ties during childhood and adolescence. Towards the end of her life, Matalon returned to Snow but did not finish it. Despite this, the beauty and literary power unique to her writing radiate from its pages with no less intensity than they do from her completed works.

Ronit Matalon died in December 2017, aged 58. Different versions of Snow were found in a folder in the room where she wrote. This is one of them.