The Remains of Love [Shards of Life]

In Shalev’s radiant new novel, her insight, intensity and unique style come together to explore the conflicts between parents and children. Elderly Hemda Horovitz lies in bed in Jerusalem, barely conscious, and bitterly examines her life: her youth on the kibbutz, unable to live up to the demands of her stern pioneer father; her loveless marriage to an equally rigid Holocaust survivor, and her two children, one of whom she couldn’t love, the other too much. Avner, her beloved son, has grown up to become a heavy, anguished man, frustrated in his work and tortured by a marriage filled with contempt and resentment. At the hospital with his mother, he becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman he sees there; after her husband’s death, a strange and delicate relationship develops between them.

Dina, Hemda’s daughter, has married a taciturn photographer and put aside her professional dreams in order to give her teenage daughter, Nitzan, the warmth she never received from her own mother. But as Nitzan withdraws from her, she slides into despair, and is overcome by a longing to adopt an abandoned child. In the face of family opposition, Dina finds herself at a dead end: she cannot give up the child she longs for, but may have to give up the family she has to satisfy it. An awe-inspiring portrayal of parents and children, of the anger, resentment, disappointment, yearning, insult, and love that bind and separate them.

The book was nominated in France for both prestigious prix Femina and prix Medicis, 2014.