The Seven Good Years [Yours, Insincerely]
“I just got here an hour ago, all excited, with my wife about to give birth. And now I`m sitting in the hallway feeling glum. Everyone has gone to treat the people injured in the terrorist attack. My wife`s contractions have slowed down, too. Probably even the baby feels this whole getting-born thing isn’t that urgent anymore.”
For six and a half years Etgar Keret has recorded his personal life, beginning with the birth of his first child and ending with his father’s death. But Keret’s sad-funny pieces tell much more than the story of his family and his career. With an ex-settler, ultra-Orthodox sister who has eleven children and eight grandchildren; a peacenik, marijuana-legalizing brother and Holocaust-survivor parents, his personal story seems to tell the story of an entire society.
After all, when your child is born on the same day as a suicide bombing; when a chat among 3-year-old kids’ parents involves questions like “Will your son join the army when he’s eighteen?” and an old school friend is scared that his model Eifel tower‒made of matchsticks‒will be ruined by Scud missiles, the personal and the national are hard to distinguish, especially in this strange part of the world.
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“The love for his child, mutual respect in marriage, solidarity towards others and comprehension of diversity inspire the stories of the book, providing a really good advice for coexistence.”
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“Through Keret’s eyes the world is a more complex and humorous place, in which the game Angry Birds is a socially acceptable outlet for terrorist impulses, and “You’ll never find a taxi,” shouted in a noisy night club, becomes “Kiss me.””
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“Etgar Keret's memoir opens an odd, alluring window into life in Israel.”
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“Utterly brilliant, clean-cut, humorous stories (…) Bravo! Required reading for fans of the Coen brothers, but also for those who want emotion does this book wonders. ”
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“ Laughing on a powder keg…Keret transforms his world into exciting theater.. Seven years of happiness (all relative) for the author, and 200 pages of delight for his readers… A gem of humor, self-irony, intelligence and subtlety.”