Women

At the center of many of Ruth Almog’s stories are women coping with their loneliness, physical handicaps and memories, and fighting against dependence. In the story “Rachel Stern Meets Fellini in Rome,” Almog enters her heroine’s consciousness, her fine oscillations between the awareness of her terminal disease, her longing for life and the need for merciful illusions. In “Henya is No Longer Blue,” the writer describes Henya’s physical deterioration and her last moments of grace, granted by Fuad, her Arab helper. “Marta, Beloved Forever” is about a woman defeated by the joint aggression of her husband, her doctor and her adolescent son. In all these stories sickness represents spiritual distress, unconquerable anxiety and repression. When a man or a child is the focus of the story, a mother or wife stands in the shadows. This is the case in “Enena” an account of a stammering boy’s longing for his mother, against the background of World War II, when the German forces approach Eretz Israel. The boy finds release and comfort with a strange, lonely woman, who acts as a substitute mother for several hours. Almog writes about people in extreme circumstances, when sickness, mental imbalance and loneliness strip away the peripheral.