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קול צעדינו
Gorgeously observed and emotionally powerful, The Sound of Our Steps is an inventive novel of immigration and exile from Ronit Matalon, a major voice in contemporary Israeli fiction
In the beginning there was Lucette, who is the mother to three children—Sammy, a gentle giant, almost blind, but a genius with locks; Corinne, a flighty beauty who cannot keep a job; and "the child," an afterthought, who strives to make sense of her fractured Egyptian-Jewish immigrant family. Lucette's children would like a kinder, warmer home, but what they have is a government-issued concrete box, out in the thorns and sand on the outskirts of Tel Aviv; and their mother, hard-worn and hardscrabble, who cleans homes by night and makes school lunches by day. Lucette quarrels with everybody, speaks only Arabic and French, is scared only of snakes, and is as likely to lock her children out as to take in a stray dog.
The child recounts her years in Lucette's house, where Israel's wars do not intrude and hold no interest. She puzzles at the mysteries of her home, why Maurice, her father, a bitter revolutionary, makes only rare appearances. And why her mother rebuffs the kind rabbi whose home she cleans in his desire to adopt her. Always watching, the child comes to fill the holes with conjecture and story.
In a masterful accumulation of short, dense scenes, by turns sensual, violent, and darkly humorous, The Sound of Our Steps questions the virtue of a family bound only by necessity, and suggests that displacement may not lead to a better life, but perhaps to art.
In the beginning there was Lucette, who is the mother to three children—Sammy, a gentle giant, almost blind, but a genius with locks; Corinne, a flighty beauty who cannot keep a job; and "the child," an afterthought, who strives to make sense of her fractured Egyptian-Jewish immigrant family. Lucette's children would like a kinder, warmer home, but what they have is a government-issued concrete box, out in the thorns and sand on the outskirts of Tel Aviv; and their mother, hard-worn and hardscrabble, who cleans homes by night and makes school lunches by day. Lucette quarrels with everybody, speaks only Arabic and French, is scared only of snakes, and is as likely to lock her children out as to take in a stray dog.
The child recounts her years in Lucette's house, where Israel's wars do not intrude and hold no interest. She puzzles at the mysteries of her home, why Maurice, her father, a bitter revolutionary, makes only rare appearances. And why her mother rebuffs the kind rabbi whose home she cleans in his desire to adopt her. Always watching, the child comes to fill the holes with conjecture and story.
In a masterful accumulation of short, dense scenes, by turns sensual, violent, and darkly humorous, The Sound of Our Steps questions the virtue of a family bound only by necessity, and suggests that displacement may not lead to a better life, but perhaps to art.
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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410 people want to read
About the author
Ronit Matalon
16 books13 followersRonit Matalon, the author of The One Facing Us and Bliss, among other books, was one of Israel’s foremost writers. Her work was been translated into six languages and honored with the prestigious Bernstein Award; the French publication of The Sound of Our Steps won the Prix Alberto-Benveniste for 2013. A journalist and critic, Matalon taught comparative literature and creative writing at Haifa University and at the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
March 21, 2025
לסקירה מפורטת בעברית, קישור לבלוג שלי -
https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/קול-...
https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/קול-...
September 27, 2021
את הספר ״קול צעדינו״ של רונית מטלון ז״ל יש לי שנים... על הכריכה מודבקת מדבקה עגולה ומוזהבת עם הכותרת ״ספר העשור לפי בחירת אנשי ספרות מובילים בארץ״ מתוך ״ידיעות אחרונות״ 25/12/2009. אני לא מתכוון להתווכח עם ״אנשי ספרות מובילים בארץ״, מה גם שצלחתי קצת מעל חמישים עמודים... העניין הוא שמדובר ברסיסי זכרונות של הסופרת מבית ילדותה ובעיקר מאימה, הכתיבה יפה אך מתישה ולא מספיק מעניינת.
אינני רואה לאן הספר יתפתח, אם בכלל שכן הוא איננו ספר עלילתי והקריאה בו מצריכה סבלנות גדולה שאינני בטוח שיש לי...
לאור האמור אני שוקל להפסיק לקרוא בו 🤔
אני זוכר שצפיתי בראיון של קובי מידן עם רונית מטלון ומאד התרשמתי
ממנה. חבל שאינני מתחבר לספרה הנחשב ביותר..
אינני רואה לאן הספר יתפתח, אם בכלל שכן הוא איננו ספר עלילתי והקריאה בו מצריכה סבלנות גדולה שאינני בטוח שיש לי...
לאור האמור אני שוקל להפסיק לקרוא בו 🤔
אני זוכר שצפיתי בראיון של קובי מידן עם רונית מטלון ומאד התרשמתי
ממנה. חבל שאינני מתחבר לספרה הנחשב ביותר..
July 30, 2015
"The Sound of Our Steps" doesn't tell a story; it paints a picture. And there lie both its strength and weakness. The picture is drawn in fragmentary, impressionistic vignettes by "the child" who lives with her Egyptian-Jewish immigrant family in a government-provided concrete box ("the shack") on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The constant fear of attack that plagues modern-day Israel barely registers on the child's consciousness. Her world is circumscribed by her family -- older brother and sister, grandmother, mostly-absent father, and mother. It is "the mother" who dominates her life and the novel and the sound of whose steps is awaited with trepidation by children who are terrified of her violent outbursts.
The mother is Lucette, who speaks only French and Arabic and was uprooted from a privileged, protected life as a delicate beauty in Cairo. She is exhausted and now has hands made rough with callouses from cleaning a rabbi's house and other menial jobs and her determination to coax a garden out of sandy soil. Her primary connection to the refined life she knew is to read, reread and cry over "La Dame aux Camélias" as she struggles to support her children and wrestle the shack into some semblance of a home.
Maurice, husband and father, is a former revolutionary made bitter by the dominance in Israel of European Jews and the marginalization of the Mizrahi, or Jews from the Middle East. He makes only occasional appearances in the family's life and provides no support but looms large in the child's imagination.
Ronit Matalon is a distinguished Israeli novelist, critic, academic and journalist. This, her seventh novel, is the most explicitly autobiographical. It won several prizes in Israel and in French translation. It does create a harrowing, detailed picture of immigrant life but the lack of plot makes for tough reading, with only the pull of language to keep the reader engaged through tenuously linked short (some very short) chapters that skip around in time. I have little doubt that Dalyu Bilu, who translated the Hebrew into English, did so masterfully but whether the fault is in the original Hebrew or in the translation, I found the language sometimes stilted and self-consciously literary, albeit with lovely moments. And the impressionistic portrait might have been more compelling in 250 pages rather than almost 400.
The mother is Lucette, who speaks only French and Arabic and was uprooted from a privileged, protected life as a delicate beauty in Cairo. She is exhausted and now has hands made rough with callouses from cleaning a rabbi's house and other menial jobs and her determination to coax a garden out of sandy soil. Her primary connection to the refined life she knew is to read, reread and cry over "La Dame aux Camélias" as she struggles to support her children and wrestle the shack into some semblance of a home.
Maurice, husband and father, is a former revolutionary made bitter by the dominance in Israel of European Jews and the marginalization of the Mizrahi, or Jews from the Middle East. He makes only occasional appearances in the family's life and provides no support but looms large in the child's imagination.
Ronit Matalon is a distinguished Israeli novelist, critic, academic and journalist. This, her seventh novel, is the most explicitly autobiographical. It won several prizes in Israel and in French translation. It does create a harrowing, detailed picture of immigrant life but the lack of plot makes for tough reading, with only the pull of language to keep the reader engaged through tenuously linked short (some very short) chapters that skip around in time. I have little doubt that Dalyu Bilu, who translated the Hebrew into English, did so masterfully but whether the fault is in the original Hebrew or in the translation, I found the language sometimes stilted and self-consciously literary, albeit with lovely moments. And the impressionistic portrait might have been more compelling in 250 pages rather than almost 400.
October 14, 2022
Mısır'dan İsrail'e göç etmiş Yahudi ailenin barakada süren tıkış pıkış hayatını en küçük çocuktan dinliyoruz. Köşeye sinmiş insanların dışarıdan gelen ayak sesleri her daim kulaklarımızda yankılanıyor. Küçük bir çocuk ne kadar anlatabilir ki demeyin, zira öyle ayrıntılı öyle azar azar bölümlerde aktarıyor ki anneyi, çocukları, yok olan babanın geçmişle bağlı cümlelerini zihnimize kazıyor.
İnanılmaz bir metin okudum. Şimdikinden çok an'dan an'a geçiş yaparak aktarılan ölümün, göç edişliğin ağırlığı, değişimi ve yaşamın getiri götürüsünü görebileceğimiz sıradışı ve çarpıcı bir kitaptı. Gönülden tavsiyemdir.
#ayakseslerimiz #ronitmatalon #yapıkrediyayınları
İnanılmaz bir metin okudum. Şimdikinden çok an'dan an'a geçiş yaparak aktarılan ölümün, göç edişliğin ağırlığı, değişimi ve yaşamın getiri götürüsünü görebileceğimiz sıradışı ve çarpıcı bir kitaptı. Gönülden tavsiyemdir.
#ayakseslerimiz #ronitmatalon #yapıkrediyayınları
April 19, 2025
On Ronit Matalon and The Sound of Our Steps
Ronit Matalon's passing is a profound loss to literature. She was, without exaggeration, the Toni Morrison of her country—a fearless and groundbreaking voice who brought marginalized narratives to the center of Israeli literature. Her work refuses silence. It experiments boldly, resists censorship, and dares to tell the truth where others look away.
In The Sound of Our Steps, Matalon gives voice to the Mizrahi experience—the struggle of Arab Jews, often silenced or pushed aside in dominant Ashkenazi Israeli narratives. She doesn't just represent them; she writes them in full complexity, tenderness, and rage. The mother figure at the heart of the novel, inspired by Matalon's own life, is not a stereotype. She's fierce, chaotic, political, and deeply alive.
What makes Matalon's work especially vital is her inclusion of Palestinian characters and her refusal to dehumanize or ignore them. She writes Palestinians not as footnotes or abstracted figures of conflict, but as dynamic, dignified individuals. In a literary and political climate where acknowledging the Palestinian experience often invites backlash, Matalon confronts it head-on. She does not sidestep the Israeli occupation of Palestine; she writes into it, from within the contradictions of her society, without compromise.
Her commitment to writing the truth—about class, race, gender, and occupation—makes her one of the most important voices in modern Hebrew literature. She saw the cracks in the system and insisted on widening them. Her work speaks to the pain and complexity of life in an apartheid state, without ever losing sight of individual humanity.
Matalon’s death leaves behind a silence, but her novels speak louder than ever. Her writing will continue to challenge, provoke, and move readers long after her voice is gone
Ronit Matalon's passing is a profound loss to literature. She was, without exaggeration, the Toni Morrison of her country—a fearless and groundbreaking voice who brought marginalized narratives to the center of Israeli literature. Her work refuses silence. It experiments boldly, resists censorship, and dares to tell the truth where others look away.
In The Sound of Our Steps, Matalon gives voice to the Mizrahi experience—the struggle of Arab Jews, often silenced or pushed aside in dominant Ashkenazi Israeli narratives. She doesn't just represent them; she writes them in full complexity, tenderness, and rage. The mother figure at the heart of the novel, inspired by Matalon's own life, is not a stereotype. She's fierce, chaotic, political, and deeply alive.
What makes Matalon's work especially vital is her inclusion of Palestinian characters and her refusal to dehumanize or ignore them. She writes Palestinians not as footnotes or abstracted figures of conflict, but as dynamic, dignified individuals. In a literary and political climate where acknowledging the Palestinian experience often invites backlash, Matalon confronts it head-on. She does not sidestep the Israeli occupation of Palestine; she writes into it, from within the contradictions of her society, without compromise.
Her commitment to writing the truth—about class, race, gender, and occupation—makes her one of the most important voices in modern Hebrew literature. She saw the cracks in the system and insisted on widening them. Her work speaks to the pain and complexity of life in an apartheid state, without ever losing sight of individual humanity.
Matalon’s death leaves behind a silence, but her novels speak louder than ever. Her writing will continue to challenge, provoke, and move readers long after her voice is gone
August 27, 2022
This one is a toughie! I appreciate what Matalon was trying to do, and I appreciate the story behind all the bells and whistles. But this style of writing didn’t really work for me.
We are following a family in mid-century Israel who appear to be based on Matalon’s own family. Living in a shack outside of Tel Aviv with her mother, siblings, grandmother and occasionally father, it’s a story about class and ethnic divides. Matalon’s (fictional and real) family is Mizrahi, Jews of Middle Eastern descent. They’re less well off, financially, than their Ashkenazi, aka Jews of European descent, counterparts. They are also culturally demeaned in many ways; for example, the narrator’s mother, named Lucette, is pressured into publicly changing it to the Hebrew Levana.
Matalon tells the stories in detached vignettes. Yes, each vignette is about the family, but it jumps in time without a particular sense of plot. The connective tissue, where it exists, is more thematic.
These are descriptively well written but insular accounts of the characters, sometimes in first person, sometimes in third. Some of the vignettes are epistolary, especially with the father, Maurice, railing against the “Ben-Gurionist” government. They are compelling because of their forthright dogmatism, unlike many of the other scenes, which tackle the politics of living more subtly. Maybe my favorite has to do with Lucette’s boss, an Ashkenazi rabbi (she cleans his home) who tries to shame her with kindness into giving up her child for a better life. That sort of self-righteousness leaps off the page in a novel that can often be so quiet.
Lucette might be “Lucette” or “Levana,” but she’s often just referred to as “the mother,” a force of nature that the children see as tied to their shack. Our narrator, “the child,” is usually referred to as such, though sometimes she’s given the name Toni. She has two older siblings—Corinne, who goes on to marry an Ashkenazi (though poor) husband whom her brother met in a prison for insubordinate soldiers; and then there’s Sammy, the brother, who works in a welding shop. I might be forgetting a lot of details, because again, the details aren’t traditionally connected to each other in a narrative form. But in essence, this story is about the minutiae of people without many means struggling to survive.
One thing I like about Matalon’s story is that Israeli politics and sense of national and religious purpose are at a minimum. It’s unlike a lot of Israeli books I read where these issues are front and center. It almost reminds me of reading Palestinian author, Sayed Kashua’s works on Israel, in that the idea of Israel is far less focal to these characters. More to the point, these characters are often facing the brunt of systemic oppression from those in power. Kudos, too, for making a character like Maurice flawed, in that he’s a bit of a dick to his family, but he has a point about the broader issues.
Some politics poke in here or there, like a reference to the Six Day War and bomb shelters. It’s just not as central, so it gives the story a different feel. Overt politics are even less central here than they are in Matalon’s novella, AND THE BRIDE CLOSED THE DOOR, and that’s saying something! :P I will be comparing these two books soon on BookTube for 2022 Women in Translation Month! :D
But this sort of writing is never going to be my fave. It’s too much of a slog to get through, especially when I’m distracted by other things in my personal life. Presumably this was not a choice by the translator Dalya Bilu, but instead something she stuck to faithfully. In this case, kudos to her for doing work which seems, to me, to be akin to sifting through sand for the word choices. :P Although published by a mainstream American press, this book was also the product of the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Maybe I should go see if they’ve worked on anything more approachable, too. :P
We are following a family in mid-century Israel who appear to be based on Matalon’s own family. Living in a shack outside of Tel Aviv with her mother, siblings, grandmother and occasionally father, it’s a story about class and ethnic divides. Matalon’s (fictional and real) family is Mizrahi, Jews of Middle Eastern descent. They’re less well off, financially, than their Ashkenazi, aka Jews of European descent, counterparts. They are also culturally demeaned in many ways; for example, the narrator’s mother, named Lucette, is pressured into publicly changing it to the Hebrew Levana.
Matalon tells the stories in detached vignettes. Yes, each vignette is about the family, but it jumps in time without a particular sense of plot. The connective tissue, where it exists, is more thematic.
These are descriptively well written but insular accounts of the characters, sometimes in first person, sometimes in third. Some of the vignettes are epistolary, especially with the father, Maurice, railing against the “Ben-Gurionist” government. They are compelling because of their forthright dogmatism, unlike many of the other scenes, which tackle the politics of living more subtly. Maybe my favorite has to do with Lucette’s boss, an Ashkenazi rabbi (she cleans his home) who tries to shame her with kindness into giving up her child for a better life. That sort of self-righteousness leaps off the page in a novel that can often be so quiet.
Lucette might be “Lucette” or “Levana,” but she’s often just referred to as “the mother,” a force of nature that the children see as tied to their shack. Our narrator, “the child,” is usually referred to as such, though sometimes she’s given the name Toni. She has two older siblings—Corinne, who goes on to marry an Ashkenazi (though poor) husband whom her brother met in a prison for insubordinate soldiers; and then there’s Sammy, the brother, who works in a welding shop. I might be forgetting a lot of details, because again, the details aren’t traditionally connected to each other in a narrative form. But in essence, this story is about the minutiae of people without many means struggling to survive.
One thing I like about Matalon’s story is that Israeli politics and sense of national and religious purpose are at a minimum. It’s unlike a lot of Israeli books I read where these issues are front and center. It almost reminds me of reading Palestinian author, Sayed Kashua’s works on Israel, in that the idea of Israel is far less focal to these characters. More to the point, these characters are often facing the brunt of systemic oppression from those in power. Kudos, too, for making a character like Maurice flawed, in that he’s a bit of a dick to his family, but he has a point about the broader issues.
Some politics poke in here or there, like a reference to the Six Day War and bomb shelters. It’s just not as central, so it gives the story a different feel. Overt politics are even less central here than they are in Matalon’s novella, AND THE BRIDE CLOSED THE DOOR, and that’s saying something! :P I will be comparing these two books soon on BookTube for 2022 Women in Translation Month! :D
But this sort of writing is never going to be my fave. It’s too much of a slog to get through, especially when I’m distracted by other things in my personal life. Presumably this was not a choice by the translator Dalya Bilu, but instead something she stuck to faithfully. In this case, kudos to her for doing work which seems, to me, to be akin to sifting through sand for the word choices. :P Although published by a mainstream American press, this book was also the product of the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Maybe I should go see if they’ve worked on anything more approachable, too. :P
July 5, 2018
Different in structure and style to most other books. No pattern to timeline, no structure to paragraphs, no real plot line. So if you have difficulties with those kinds of things - avoid this book. If you can cope - there are some wonderful vignettes.
November 10, 2018
I am torn regarding the rating. I gave felt it deserved 2-stars, which I don't ordinarily rate a book. I ended up giving it 3-stars due to the historical aspect of immigration and assimilation.
The Sound of Our Steps was not an easy read for me due to the bits and pieces of life that was illustrated. The vignettes were not necessarily in a chronological order, and were more like descriptives born of stream of consciousness.
I found it to be a tedious read, for me.
The Sound of Our Steps was not an easy read for me due to the bits and pieces of life that was illustrated. The vignettes were not necessarily in a chronological order, and were more like descriptives born of stream of consciousness.
I found it to be a tedious read, for me.
March 14, 2019
The plot progression was difficult to follow because it was quite slow.
Beautifully written.
Beautifully written.
August 4, 2015
Ronit Matalon is an acclaimed contemporary Israeli writer and social activist, the daughter of Egyptian-Jewish immigrants, who lives in Tel Aviv. Her latest novel is a version of her childhood memories of living with her single mother in a poor immigrant neighbourhood after her father had abandoned the family. It’s a series of vignettes rather than a sustained narrative, consisting of short chapters loosely connected one to the other, with frequent digressions and interludes, all of which makes for some confusing reading at times. The mother, Lucette, for example, obsessively watches the film “Camille” and identifies herself with Marguerite Gautier from Dumas’ novel La dame aux Camellias – there are even whole extracts from the novel. Set in Israel in the 50s and 60s, the family live in a government-owned tumbledown shack in a dry and desolate area. The father is a political activist, and he makes only occasional appearances. Matalon includes in the novel extracts from his political writings, his pamphlets and articles on discrimination against Sephardic, or Mizrahi, Jews. As a result of all these digressions plus the impressionistic style of the narrative, the book is not an easy read and for me it had a curiously alienating effect, even though the core story of a small child living with her unpredictable mother is at times touching and compelling. The mother has to work long and gruelling hours to support the family, which also includes two older children, and the sheer effort involved obviously makes the reader feel some sympathy for her. However, Matalon’s style didn’t draw me in and I read the book as an outsider looking in rather than as a participant. It’s certainly an imaginative and original novel, often perceptive, but one that requires some considerable effort on the part of the reader. It also helps to be familiar with Israel’s recent history and politics. Nevertheless, in spite of my reservations, the book is definitely worth the effort, as it’s a haunting and poetic portrayal of one family’s hardscrabble existence.
February 9, 2016
I found this challenging to read, as it is written in short bits ranging from a paragraph or two to 4-5 pages. The bits are connected to each other in a sort of stream of consciousness way, such that a word or two in one piece connects to the theme of the next one. It's not arranged chronologically at all, and I had to work pretty hard to figure out what was going on in relation to stuff before and after a given section.
It's about a Jewish family that emigrates to Israel from Egypt in the early 1950's. They end up in a house that's described as a "shack" near Tel Aviv. The family is composed of Lucette, the mother; her 2 children from her first marriage and her much younger daughter from her 2nd; her mother, Nona, and her sometimes estranged 2nd husband, Maurice. It's a loud book-the family is always arguing with each other. Lucette is trying to survive in a country which is not easy even for those with money and education and connections. Maurice is embittered because of the way Mizrahi Jews are treated by the Ashkenazi establishment. Nona and Lucette clash over Lucette's childrearing skills and just about everything else. The kids just try to hang on and make some sense of the chaos.
I'm glad I read it because the situation of Mizrahi Jews in the days of early statehood in Israel is not something I know much about. But it was a struggle, and there were some instances of clumsy translation. I'd consider reading more of Matalon's work if it's more accessible.
It's about a Jewish family that emigrates to Israel from Egypt in the early 1950's. They end up in a house that's described as a "shack" near Tel Aviv. The family is composed of Lucette, the mother; her 2 children from her first marriage and her much younger daughter from her 2nd; her mother, Nona, and her sometimes estranged 2nd husband, Maurice. It's a loud book-the family is always arguing with each other. Lucette is trying to survive in a country which is not easy even for those with money and education and connections. Maurice is embittered because of the way Mizrahi Jews are treated by the Ashkenazi establishment. Nona and Lucette clash over Lucette's childrearing skills and just about everything else. The kids just try to hang on and make some sense of the chaos.
I'm glad I read it because the situation of Mizrahi Jews in the days of early statehood in Israel is not something I know much about. But it was a struggle, and there were some instances of clumsy translation. I'd consider reading more of Matalon's work if it's more accessible.
March 25, 2016
I received a free copy of this book through Goodread's Giveaways.
I hate giving a 1 star rating, especially since this is the author's real life thoughts and feelings, but I wasn't even able to finish the book and I have never had that issue before. Usually I am able to push through and complete a book.
Unfortunately I don't know if it was the author's writing style or a translation issue but there were way too many run on sentences and disparate thoughts for me to follow the story. There was a 2 page chapter that was 1 sentence long. It was so run on that by the time I finished the 2 page sentence I had no idea what it was about. I found that happening many times. The sentences were so long that I would get distracted trying to puzzle out what it even meant.
I also had difficulty with the fact that she referred to everyone with the title The..."the" mother, "the brother", etc.
I really wanted to enjoy this story. I gave it my best shot, I tried starting it over a few times but found the cadence, structure and jumping around of timelines to be too distracting for me.
I hate giving a 1 star rating, especially since this is the author's real life thoughts and feelings, but I wasn't even able to finish the book and I have never had that issue before. Usually I am able to push through and complete a book.
Unfortunately I don't know if it was the author's writing style or a translation issue but there were way too many run on sentences and disparate thoughts for me to follow the story. There was a 2 page chapter that was 1 sentence long. It was so run on that by the time I finished the 2 page sentence I had no idea what it was about. I found that happening many times. The sentences were so long that I would get distracted trying to puzzle out what it even meant.
I also had difficulty with the fact that she referred to everyone with the title The..."the" mother, "the brother", etc.
I really wanted to enjoy this story. I gave it my best shot, I tried starting it over a few times but found the cadence, structure and jumping around of timelines to be too distracting for me.
June 11, 2015
3.5/5
The Sound of our Steps by Ronit Matalon is filled with beautiful prose which tells the story of a family living outside of Tel Aviv, their struggles as a family and individuals, especially of Lucette and her children, who are doing what they can to get by as husband and father, Maurice is seldom home. It took a bit for me to get into this Israeli story, I do not know if the difficulty lies in the translation or if this is how the story is written, however it was worth the effort, the story is beautiful and heartbreaking.
The Sound of our Steps by Ronit Matalon is filled with beautiful prose which tells the story of a family living outside of Tel Aviv, their struggles as a family and individuals, especially of Lucette and her children, who are doing what they can to get by as husband and father, Maurice is seldom home. It took a bit for me to get into this Israeli story, I do not know if the difficulty lies in the translation or if this is how the story is written, however it was worth the effort, the story is beautiful and heartbreaking.
July 3, 2016
4.5 rounded up to 5. My review appears in New York Journal of Books. Read that review first. Additional remarks (including an additional excerpt) that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.
Israeli books: Ronit Matalon's autobiographic novel The Sound of Our Steps
However politically controversial immigration is, America is a country of immigrants and a land of second chances, so it’s not surprising that immigrant literature is a popular genre. Such stories frequently have a neo-liberal moral that hard work pays off, but there are exceptions. What about the immigrant who never fully assimilates nor attains the same socio-economic status she enjoyed in her native land? Suppose she does not have the option of returning to a country of origin that ethnically cleansed her.
When Israel was founded in 1948 Egypt’s Jewish community numbered about 80,000 the majority of whom initially stayed put. After the 1956 war Egyptian President Nasser started forcing Egypt’s Jews to leave, and after the Six Day War in 1967 those remaining Egyptian Jews were expelled. Egyptian Jews were dispersed to Israel, France, and the United States, and many members of the community were traumatized by the dislocation and never regained their former affluence and social status.
American readers were introduced to one such Egyptian Jewish exile in Lucette Lagnato’s 2007 memoir of her father, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. In it Lagnado compare’s her father’s cosmopolitan affluence and self-confidence in Cairo with the traumatized immigrant he became who never felt at home in New York where the family lived in socially marginal and economically reduced circumstances.
A fictional and more literary tale of an Egyptian Jewish family’s diminished circumstances after immigrating to Israel is The Sound of Our Steps by Ronit Matalon, a novel published today in Dalya Bilu’s English translation by Metropolitan Books. In my New York Journal of Books review I praise it as a “beautifully written and skillfully translated book that rewards rereading.”
The book, whose Hebrew title is Kol Tsa’adenu, won Matalon several awards including Israel’s Bernstein Prize (2009), Bar-Ilan University’s Neuman Prize (2010), and France’s Alberto Benveniste Prize (2013). In 2010 The Hebrew University in Jerusalem awarded her an honorary Ph.D. for her contributions to literature and for her social activism.
The Sound of Our Steps’ non-linear narrative is fragmented into very short chapters whose titles often are the last words of the previous chapter in the manner of arabesque visual arts and literary styles (Matalon once mentioned in an interview that one of her most prized possessions is her father’s Arabic edition of The 1001 Nights) and is shaped in the author’s varied prose styles to create impressionist, cubist, and collage portraits of the immigrant family members in individual chapters and a kaleidoscopic effect overall.
Often readers cannot be sure where a particular chapter fits in the family’s chronology or what precisely is the child narrator’s age, but Matalon does provide a few clues. We know that the mother was 16 when she had her first child, that the oldest child was four when the family immigrated from Egypt to Israel, and that the narrator, who is the author’s alter-ego, is 14 years younger than her oldest sibling, which means her mother was 30 when the narrator was born, and towards the end of the novel when the mother is 70 the narrator is 40. For most of the novel the narrator’s age ranges between pre-school and middle school.
Matalon was born in 1959. If the narrator is her age then the oldest sibling would have been born in 1945 and the family would have immigrated in 1949, and though the characters are fictional and their ages are imprecise, Matalon provides sign posts such as the father’s references to the 1956 war and the Ben Gurionists (David Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel in 1963), as well as other historical events, such as the 1967 Six Day War and the 1979 Peace Treaty with Egypt.
For a fuller discussion of The Sound of Our Steps see my NYJB review, which includes character and plot outlines as well as an excerpt from one of the novel’s lyrical passages. Let’s close this article with an excerpt in which Ms. Matalon employs anaphora:
“Apparently she was married against her will.
“Apparently she was tortured.
“Apparently she was beaten during pregnancy.
“Apparently she escaped from her husband’s house in the dead of night, dressed only in her nightgown
“Apparently she was in the seventh month of her pregnancy with my brother when she ran away.
“Apparently there was a scandal: Egypt, Cairo, a girl from a good family.
“Apparently her husband divorced her, he never saw her again, he never acknowledged the child as his son.
“Apparently Maurice (a close friend of her elder brother, a frequent visitor to her parents’ home) was waiting only for this, for her, never mind her condition.
“Apparently they got married, she and Maurice, when she was about to give birth.
“Apparently ‘he was the only one who would have done such a thing,’ only Maurice: to not give a damn about convention or blood ties, to take the child as his son, to love him like a son, to raise him or not, just as he didn’t raise his biological children, with no discrimination.”
Israeli books: Ronit Matalon's autobiographic novel The Sound of Our Steps
However politically controversial immigration is, America is a country of immigrants and a land of second chances, so it’s not surprising that immigrant literature is a popular genre. Such stories frequently have a neo-liberal moral that hard work pays off, but there are exceptions. What about the immigrant who never fully assimilates nor attains the same socio-economic status she enjoyed in her native land? Suppose she does not have the option of returning to a country of origin that ethnically cleansed her.
When Israel was founded in 1948 Egypt’s Jewish community numbered about 80,000 the majority of whom initially stayed put. After the 1956 war Egyptian President Nasser started forcing Egypt’s Jews to leave, and after the Six Day War in 1967 those remaining Egyptian Jews were expelled. Egyptian Jews were dispersed to Israel, France, and the United States, and many members of the community were traumatized by the dislocation and never regained their former affluence and social status.
American readers were introduced to one such Egyptian Jewish exile in Lucette Lagnato’s 2007 memoir of her father, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. In it Lagnado compare’s her father’s cosmopolitan affluence and self-confidence in Cairo with the traumatized immigrant he became who never felt at home in New York where the family lived in socially marginal and economically reduced circumstances.
A fictional and more literary tale of an Egyptian Jewish family’s diminished circumstances after immigrating to Israel is The Sound of Our Steps by Ronit Matalon, a novel published today in Dalya Bilu’s English translation by Metropolitan Books. In my New York Journal of Books review I praise it as a “beautifully written and skillfully translated book that rewards rereading.”
The book, whose Hebrew title is Kol Tsa’adenu, won Matalon several awards including Israel’s Bernstein Prize (2009), Bar-Ilan University’s Neuman Prize (2010), and France’s Alberto Benveniste Prize (2013). In 2010 The Hebrew University in Jerusalem awarded her an honorary Ph.D. for her contributions to literature and for her social activism.
The Sound of Our Steps’ non-linear narrative is fragmented into very short chapters whose titles often are the last words of the previous chapter in the manner of arabesque visual arts and literary styles (Matalon once mentioned in an interview that one of her most prized possessions is her father’s Arabic edition of The 1001 Nights) and is shaped in the author’s varied prose styles to create impressionist, cubist, and collage portraits of the immigrant family members in individual chapters and a kaleidoscopic effect overall.
Often readers cannot be sure where a particular chapter fits in the family’s chronology or what precisely is the child narrator’s age, but Matalon does provide a few clues. We know that the mother was 16 when she had her first child, that the oldest child was four when the family immigrated from Egypt to Israel, and that the narrator, who is the author’s alter-ego, is 14 years younger than her oldest sibling, which means her mother was 30 when the narrator was born, and towards the end of the novel when the mother is 70 the narrator is 40. For most of the novel the narrator’s age ranges between pre-school and middle school.
Matalon was born in 1959. If the narrator is her age then the oldest sibling would have been born in 1945 and the family would have immigrated in 1949, and though the characters are fictional and their ages are imprecise, Matalon provides sign posts such as the father’s references to the 1956 war and the Ben Gurionists (David Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel in 1963), as well as other historical events, such as the 1967 Six Day War and the 1979 Peace Treaty with Egypt.
For a fuller discussion of The Sound of Our Steps see my NYJB review, which includes character and plot outlines as well as an excerpt from one of the novel’s lyrical passages. Let’s close this article with an excerpt in which Ms. Matalon employs anaphora:
“Apparently she was married against her will.
“Apparently she was tortured.
“Apparently she was beaten during pregnancy.
“Apparently she escaped from her husband’s house in the dead of night, dressed only in her nightgown
“Apparently she was in the seventh month of her pregnancy with my brother when she ran away.
“Apparently there was a scandal: Egypt, Cairo, a girl from a good family.
“Apparently her husband divorced her, he never saw her again, he never acknowledged the child as his son.
“Apparently Maurice (a close friend of her elder brother, a frequent visitor to her parents’ home) was waiting only for this, for her, never mind her condition.
“Apparently they got married, she and Maurice, when she was about to give birth.
“Apparently ‘he was the only one who would have done such a thing,’ only Maurice: to not give a damn about convention or blood ties, to take the child as his son, to love him like a son, to raise him or not, just as he didn’t raise his biological children, with no discrimination.”
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September 24, 2023C'est très bien écrit, très intéressant stylistiquement, mais juste dans pas mon genre de lecture. On y retrouve de très court chapitres, presque fragmentaires, une fresque familiale, scènes du quotidien, prose plutôt poétique, beaucoup de références littéraires et artistiques, des plantes et de la nourriture.
November 9, 2023
Even though the book was recommended by Haaretz as one of the best books i didn't manage to connect to it. Partially of course is because i'm a male & the writer is female but i don't think this was the only problem. The book was slow, repetetive (the steps part was coming over & over) and uninteresting
May 9, 2018
לקח לי יותר מחודש לסיים את הספר הלא ארוך במיוחד הזה.
הספר כתוב במבנה של פרגמנטים/פרקים של חצי עמוד עד חמישה עמודים (לרוב כשני עמודים לפרגמנט).
חלק מהפרקים כתובים נהדר, ומרגשים מאוד, וחלקם משעממים ותלושים.
הספר מהווה חשיפה מעניינת בשבילי לעולמה של משפחה מזרחית בשנות ה-50-60.
הספר כתוב במבנה של פרגמנטים/פרקים של חצי עמוד עד חמישה עמודים (לרוב כשני עמודים לפרגמנט).
חלק מהפרקים כתובים נהדר, ומרגשים מאוד, וחלקם משעממים ותלושים.
הספר מהווה חשיפה מעניינת בשבילי לעולמה של משפחה מזרחית בשנות ה-50-60.
July 28, 2020
3.5/5
January 25, 2022
זה היה יפהפה ואני די בטוחה שהבנתי רק חלק קטן ממה שהלך שם. זה דורש קריאה חוזרת מבחינתי, ורצוי לא באודיו (הוא לא משהו משום מה)
October 9, 2025
פרגמנטלי מדי בשבילי
January 31, 2023
Summer 2022
September 17, 2025
רומן סוחף ורחב יריעה בו מספרת רונית מטלון על ילדותה. בסבלנות ודקדקנות ארכיאולוגית היא מאתרת ומשחזרת כל פרט זעיר, כל מחשבה, מעשה, כל מה שקרה איפה שהייתה ובין הסובבים אותה. המשפטים הם קצרים, קצרי נשימה. במילה אחת או שתיים היא יוצרת עולם ומלואו. דווקא בגלל החסכנות במילים והדיוק נוצרת תמונה ססגונית של המכלול: הילדה (כמו שהיא בדרך כלל קוראת לעצמה בספר, בגוף שלישי, וכמו שכולם קראו לה), גדלה בבית עם אם קשת יום שנאבקת לפרנס את משפחתה, עם סבתא שמכניסה אותה תחת כנפיה ואח ואחות שגדולים ממנה ב-13 ו-14 שנה. האב נוכח נפקד. לא ילדות שמיד קוראים לה אידאלית. ותוך כדי זה היא גם מתארת איך היה לגדול בישראל של שנות השישים. גם היא הקשיבה כל יום בשתיים בצהריים לרדיו, ל-"מסע הפלאים של נילס אולגרסן ואווזי הבר" (עמוד 97). ובעצם זה ספר על חייה כבת כי הוא מסתיים במות הוריה.
מה הניע את רונית מטלון לכתוב את הדו"ח הזה? ניסיון לשחזר ולתפוס מה שהיה, לאחוז בזמן? אולי לנסות להבין בדיעבד? רצון לגלות איך הייתה כילדה, עכשיו מנקודת מבטה כמבוגרת? הזדמנות לאחות ולהדביק? אפשר בעיקר לנחש. האם כך באמת היו הדברים בחייה? בעצם זה לא משנה שהרי המוטו של הספר, הלקוח מת"ס אליוט, הוא: "...מה שיכול היה להיות ומה שהיה מורים על תכלית אחת, הווה תמיד. קול צעדים מהדהד בזיכרון..." . רונית מטלון רק לוחשת לנו באוזן "מה שחשבה הילדה ברבות הזמן לאמת: שהסוד, החבוי מן העין והשקוף, הוא הטוב, לא הרע, שהאהבה היא הסוד ולא חוסר-האהבה, שהמופע הדק של חסד האושר מוסתר על-ידי היריד הפתייני של הסבל...".
מרשים, מקסים, אנושי ונוגע ללב. אנדרטה פומבית לחיים אישיים פרטיים.
אני שמח שבמקרה עברתי מתי שעברתי ליד ארון הספרים קח-תן של "סוף סיפור" באמסטרדם ומצאתי את הספר הזה.
מה הניע את רונית מטלון לכתוב את הדו"ח הזה? ניסיון לשחזר ולתפוס מה שהיה, לאחוז בזמן? אולי לנסות להבין בדיעבד? רצון לגלות איך הייתה כילדה, עכשיו מנקודת מבטה כמבוגרת? הזדמנות לאחות ולהדביק? אפשר בעיקר לנחש. האם כך באמת היו הדברים בחייה? בעצם זה לא משנה שהרי המוטו של הספר, הלקוח מת"ס אליוט, הוא: "...מה שיכול היה להיות ומה שהיה מורים על תכלית אחת, הווה תמיד. קול צעדים מהדהד בזיכרון..." . רונית מטלון רק לוחשת לנו באוזן "מה שחשבה הילדה ברבות הזמן לאמת: שהסוד, החבוי מן העין והשקוף, הוא הטוב, לא הרע, שהאהבה היא הסוד ולא חוסר-האהבה, שהמופע הדק של חסד האושר מוסתר על-ידי היריד הפתייני של הסבל...".
מרשים, מקסים, אנושי ונוגע ללב. אנדרטה פומבית לחיים אישיים פרטיים.
אני שמח שבמקרה עברתי מתי שעברתי ליד ארון הספרים קח-תן של "סוף סיפור" באמסטרדם ומצאתי את הספר הזה.
June 5, 2015
Towards the end of Ronit Matalon’s novel, The Sound of Our Steps, Lucette, the mother, says, “Everything’s standing still…slowly eating up your soul, little by little, with a teaspoon.” She spent her time “lying down, getting up , sitting down, standing up, going out to look at the garden in the desolation of everything standing still…between going in and coming out, emptying action and movement of meaning, purpose, and reason…” This accurately and exquisitely sums up how I felt while reading this book. I have no argument with the words; they’re poetry. I struggled immensely with the little one-, two- and three-page vignettes told by one family member or another that on the surface appeared to be unconnected and go nowhere. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think in the end they were connected and they did go somewhere, but I, as the reader, had to work so hard to parse this out that at finish I was too exhausted to care. The Sound of Our Steps is a look at the lives of a mother and her immigrant family in Israel who struggle with each other and a father who appears at will.
October 10, 2015
Excellent book. Loved the realism, the descriptions and the characters and the world as viewed through the eyes of a growing child, not understanding all that was going on around her. The only problem was the I, too, did not understand all that was going on and the dream sequences and more magical sections were lost on me as was the ending. I'm very happy this was a selection of my book club, as maybe I will gain some understanding when we review it together.
May 31, 2015
Lucette lives with her children in a shack on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Maurice is an absentee husband and father, which adds to Lucettes turmoil. Lots of struggle and heartache to survive. THANKYOU GOODREADS FIRSTREADS FOR THIS FREE BOOK.
December 19, 2015
The publisher's blurb refers to "a masterful accumulation of short, dense scenes" but to me if was something else. Have you ever sat next to a drunk friend who wants to tell you the story of his/her life but only succeeds in telling a bunch of disjointed tales that may or may not connect, may or may not be true, or may or may not even make sense? That's this book.
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June 11, 2011Didn't get into this one. Not quite sure why. Not a bad book, but have much better ones ahead of me...
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August 6, 2015Review by Ranen Omer-Sherman for the Jewish Book Council.
April 8, 2016
it was beautifully written and had great images, but it was choppy and disjointed and I couldn't get attached to it. I gave it 100 pages. It's a great idea but I couldn't get it.
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