Small Change

These six stories are variations on the theme of life and death, the duality of existence. In "Low, Close to the Floor," the narrator portrays a man who has been twice widowed. The old man tearfully wonders beside which of his wives he should be buried. The story "My Friend B.'s Feast" concerns a woman dying of cancer. She has two hours' leave from the hospital to enjoy her "last meal." At the heart of the story "Small Change" are the strange and obsessive relationships within a family. Taken together, the six stories create a detailed psychological and physical confrontation with death.


Hendel's writing is all subtle nuances and imagination, of a quality for which it is difficult to find adequate superlatives.
Haaretz

The book is firmly structured, both from the point of view of the building blocks composing each story, and in its overall structure as a story cycle.
Yedioth Ahronoth