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The Lover: A Novel of Israel and Palestine
“Sacks is an extraordinarily gifted writer.”— Washington Post ? The author of the acclaimed City of a Thousand Gates returns with an intense, page-turning love story between a twenty-seven year old Canadian woman and a nineteen-year old Israeli soldier, set in contemporary Israel. The story of Allison and Eyal unfolds primarily in Tel Aviv where Allie, a thoughtful and intelligent academic searching for a sense of where she belongs in the world, falls deeply and unexpectedly in love with a young Israeli doing his military service. Their love story is sensual, filled with pleasure, longing, fear, moments of deep connection, failures of communication, and ultimately, a quiet and devastating betrayal. Their romance has a rhythm private and unique to when he is away on military missions, they write love letters; when he returns home for weekends, they are entwined and inseparable. Allie is embraced by Eyal’s family, and their acceptance is very important to her. But when Eyal returns home from an invasion of Gaza, to which he has a surprising emotional response, Allie has changed so radically that her betrayal of her lover feels both shocking and tragic. The Lover is a provocative, immersive, gorgeously written love story reminiscent of Marguerite Duras’ classic novel. Both books portray a seductive love affair in a colonial setting, atmospheric and rich with foreign detail, that raises unsettling questions about inequality, conflict, intensity, war, and danger. At once beautiful and disturbing, propulsive and poignant, The Lover will entrance readers and hold them spellbound.
288 pages, Paperback
Published May 14, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
April 4, 2024
This book hurts. In fact it is nothing short of excruciating—in a good way. This is how it is when the truth, with all its contradictions, fear, love, and deceit, is the story.
Through the tale of a Canadian Jew (her father is Jewish; her mother is not; so by Jewish law, her Jewishness is a choice) studying in Israel who falls in love with a young Israeli soldier, Rebecca Sacks writes the whole mess of Israel vs. Palestine, Jewishness, the Israeli army, racism, fear, rigidity, unfairness, and desperate young love that is a prayer to the Big Love—to exist above the fray, and finally the choice to live “on the wrong side of history.”
Everybody is real and has a point you can identify with. Everybody is right at some point that gets so distorted it veers into wrong. Nothing is simple. And thus, the excruciating pain.
This leads me to wonder if people take extremist positions in an attempt to avoid this pain of almost ripping apart from understanding the humanity and worth of everybody. When you blindly justify killing—Palestinians or Jews—you wipe out the truth of everybody’s pain and humanity.
I am a writer who read this book in the midst of my literary environment roiling with a tsunami of antisemitic extremism that I never dreamed could happen. (I will put some links to stories about this at the end of this review, in case you are not informed about the recent happenings.)
I read this book while progressive liberals are canceling writers who want to write both sides of the story. Both sides, with people hurting, is now cause for blanket condemnation. This too hurts, but there is no love involved.
I’d rather hurt from a true story that sees that all people are whole and hurting and loving and desperate and responsible for choosing extremism and inhumanity because it simply allows them a sense of power. I’d rather get ripped apart and expanded by that.
This book is that kind of truthful work. It is not predictable, so assume nothing and allow it to take you and hurt you. You’ll grow from it.
______________
To read about the literary community and antisemitism: https://michelle-cameron.com/2024/03/...
To read about the brouhaha at Guernica magazine over publication, then cancellation of a gorgeous essay by Israeli translator Joanna Chen about her efforts to aid hurting people on both sides of the conflict, as well as writer Meghan Daum’s experiences in an MFA culture where people are silenced before they can write: https://meghandaum.substack.com/p/gue...
A solution, Peace Lovers Unite: https://www.betsyrobinson-writer.com/...
Through the tale of a Canadian Jew (her father is Jewish; her mother is not; so by Jewish law, her Jewishness is a choice) studying in Israel who falls in love with a young Israeli soldier, Rebecca Sacks writes the whole mess of Israel vs. Palestine, Jewishness, the Israeli army, racism, fear, rigidity, unfairness, and desperate young love that is a prayer to the Big Love—to exist above the fray, and finally the choice to live “on the wrong side of history.”
Everybody is real and has a point you can identify with. Everybody is right at some point that gets so distorted it veers into wrong. Nothing is simple. And thus, the excruciating pain.
This leads me to wonder if people take extremist positions in an attempt to avoid this pain of almost ripping apart from understanding the humanity and worth of everybody. When you blindly justify killing—Palestinians or Jews—you wipe out the truth of everybody’s pain and humanity.
I am a writer who read this book in the midst of my literary environment roiling with a tsunami of antisemitic extremism that I never dreamed could happen. (I will put some links to stories about this at the end of this review, in case you are not informed about the recent happenings.)
I read this book while progressive liberals are canceling writers who want to write both sides of the story. Both sides, with people hurting, is now cause for blanket condemnation. This too hurts, but there is no love involved.
I’d rather hurt from a true story that sees that all people are whole and hurting and loving and desperate and responsible for choosing extremism and inhumanity because it simply allows them a sense of power. I’d rather get ripped apart and expanded by that.
This book is that kind of truthful work. It is not predictable, so assume nothing and allow it to take you and hurt you. You’ll grow from it.
______________
To read about the literary community and antisemitism: https://michelle-cameron.com/2024/03/...
To read about the brouhaha at Guernica magazine over publication, then cancellation of a gorgeous essay by Israeli translator Joanna Chen about her efforts to aid hurting people on both sides of the conflict, as well as writer Meghan Daum’s experiences in an MFA culture where people are silenced before they can write: https://meghandaum.substack.com/p/gue...
A solution, Peace Lovers Unite: https://www.betsyrobinson-writer.com/...
December 9, 2023
No one was more surprised by the success of Marguerite Duras’ The Lover than the author herself:
“The Lover is a load of shit,” she said. “It’s an airport novel. I wrote it when I was drunk.”
And yet, the book touched millions of readers, going on to win one of France’s most prestigious literary awards and later being made into the unforgettable film by director Jean-Jacques Annaud.
Rebecca Sacks, in her new novel The Lover, has turned Duras’ book on its head. While both books tell the story of a provocative love story against a colonial setting, in her version Sacks examines the power dynamics of love through the point-of-view of a Canadian woman named Allison. In Tel Aviv doing research as part of her doctorate degree in Rabbinic literature, Allie falls in love with a much younger man. Eyel is just nineteen and is in the midst of doing his military service, when he is dispatched to Gaza. When you are twenty-seven in the process of earning your PhD, dating a man who is “still a teenager” can feel transgressive. But Eyel and his family—indeed everyone in the novel—has bigger problems than age difference: first and foremost that of the endless conflict and violence that shapes their lives.
Allie is a character who travels between languages and identities. Born in Canada, she lives in New York City, where she studies ancient Hebrew. She is also learning the modern version of the language. Like all linguists, she is a bit of a shape shifter. From a secular family, she is half-Jewish, but not the half that counts; for as people tell her again and again in Israel, with a Jewish father instead of a Jewish mother, she is not “really” Jewish. But she feels Jewish. And she loves Eyel’s family and her life in Israel—such that when her initial research period ends, she applies and receives an extension to stay another year.
In Israel, Allie feels a kind of belonging that she has never felt before. The love she receives from Eyel’s family has her questioning her own family back in Canada, whom she describes as being without both warmth. But also without ideology. Her parents, she says, would never die for a cause. And it is the way the mothers in the novel tearfully send their sons off on their military duty, some of the boys never returning, that forms much of the tension of Sacks’ book.
The Lover, like Sacks’ debut novel Ten Thousand Gates, looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from multiple angles. While Ten Thousand Gates had an almost uncountable number of points-of-view characters, creating a palimpsest out of a deadly terrorist incident in Jerusalem, The Lover is mainly told from Allie’s point-of-view, interspersed with several shorter scenes told from Eyel’s perspective. But even from these much more limited point-of-view narrative, the book keeps interrogating the conflict from a multitude of oblique angles. Just when you think you are understanding things from one side, suddenly the rug is pulled and you are forced to look at it from another.
At one point, Allie befriends a Palestinian woman named Aisha. The two share a love of beauty products and of New York City. Not at all honest with her new friend, Allie omits the fact that she can speak Hebrew and has an Israeli soldier boyfriend, who is currently in Gaza. It is through Aisha’s eyes that Allison sees the conflict from the other side; just as she sees the world differently vis-a-vis her friendship with her Mizrahi roommate Talia, who struggles with the discrimination she feels from the Ashkenazi Jews around her. Talia misses the Arabic music she grew up with, though her own family lives in what Talia describes as a settlement.
“It’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge,” said Iris Murdoch about speaking a foreign language.
Some of the most beautiful parts of Sacks’ exciting new book revolve around language and Allison’s love of linguistics and ancient Hebrew. For Allie, it's not just the mental somersaults of thinking in a language so linguistically different from English that makes Hebrew so world-opening. Finding herself transformed by the language she is thinking in is to discover that her mind has so many other chambers in it, and that she is capable of being so different in Hebrew–and yet remain the same person. Perhaps like all translators, Allie sees herself changing points-of-view constantly as she acclimatizes to her life in Tel Aviv.
In the same way the Duras told her story from a point in the future as the character resipiscences about the most significant affair of her life, sacks also begins the novel when Allie is thirty-five, pregnant and married to a man that is not Eyel. As she looks back at her long-ago love of Eyel, she calls him her “ha-ex ha mitologi: the mythological ex.” That is, the man that changed everything. Allie muses how everyone can have at best one such totally transformative love in their lives, before children arrive to become the objects of such pure devotion.
The book is dedicated to “the one who lit my house on fire.”
This is a book about how a person can changed and be changed by other people. Throughout the dis-orienting ambivalence of the character and her search for belonging, it is this notion of love that stands above everything. A force beyond all other issues of identity, community, and complicity, maybe love alone is capable of saving people in a world so fueled by violence and betrayal. As with Sacks’ debut, this novel, while painful to read sometimes because you will not always admire the main character, is also a thought provoking journey into language and personal reinvention.
I loved it.
“The Lover is a load of shit,” she said. “It’s an airport novel. I wrote it when I was drunk.”
And yet, the book touched millions of readers, going on to win one of France’s most prestigious literary awards and later being made into the unforgettable film by director Jean-Jacques Annaud.
Rebecca Sacks, in her new novel The Lover, has turned Duras’ book on its head. While both books tell the story of a provocative love story against a colonial setting, in her version Sacks examines the power dynamics of love through the point-of-view of a Canadian woman named Allison. In Tel Aviv doing research as part of her doctorate degree in Rabbinic literature, Allie falls in love with a much younger man. Eyel is just nineteen and is in the midst of doing his military service, when he is dispatched to Gaza. When you are twenty-seven in the process of earning your PhD, dating a man who is “still a teenager” can feel transgressive. But Eyel and his family—indeed everyone in the novel—has bigger problems than age difference: first and foremost that of the endless conflict and violence that shapes their lives.
Allie is a character who travels between languages and identities. Born in Canada, she lives in New York City, where she studies ancient Hebrew. She is also learning the modern version of the language. Like all linguists, she is a bit of a shape shifter. From a secular family, she is half-Jewish, but not the half that counts; for as people tell her again and again in Israel, with a Jewish father instead of a Jewish mother, she is not “really” Jewish. But she feels Jewish. And she loves Eyel’s family and her life in Israel—such that when her initial research period ends, she applies and receives an extension to stay another year.
In Israel, Allie feels a kind of belonging that she has never felt before. The love she receives from Eyel’s family has her questioning her own family back in Canada, whom she describes as being without both warmth. But also without ideology. Her parents, she says, would never die for a cause. And it is the way the mothers in the novel tearfully send their sons off on their military duty, some of the boys never returning, that forms much of the tension of Sacks’ book.
The Lover, like Sacks’ debut novel Ten Thousand Gates, looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from multiple angles. While Ten Thousand Gates had an almost uncountable number of points-of-view characters, creating a palimpsest out of a deadly terrorist incident in Jerusalem, The Lover is mainly told from Allie’s point-of-view, interspersed with several shorter scenes told from Eyel’s perspective. But even from these much more limited point-of-view narrative, the book keeps interrogating the conflict from a multitude of oblique angles. Just when you think you are understanding things from one side, suddenly the rug is pulled and you are forced to look at it from another.
At one point, Allie befriends a Palestinian woman named Aisha. The two share a love of beauty products and of New York City. Not at all honest with her new friend, Allie omits the fact that she can speak Hebrew and has an Israeli soldier boyfriend, who is currently in Gaza. It is through Aisha’s eyes that Allison sees the conflict from the other side; just as she sees the world differently vis-a-vis her friendship with her Mizrahi roommate Talia, who struggles with the discrimination she feels from the Ashkenazi Jews around her. Talia misses the Arabic music she grew up with, though her own family lives in what Talia describes as a settlement.
“It’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge,” said Iris Murdoch about speaking a foreign language.
Some of the most beautiful parts of Sacks’ exciting new book revolve around language and Allison’s love of linguistics and ancient Hebrew. For Allie, it's not just the mental somersaults of thinking in a language so linguistically different from English that makes Hebrew so world-opening. Finding herself transformed by the language she is thinking in is to discover that her mind has so many other chambers in it, and that she is capable of being so different in Hebrew–and yet remain the same person. Perhaps like all translators, Allie sees herself changing points-of-view constantly as she acclimatizes to her life in Tel Aviv.
In the same way the Duras told her story from a point in the future as the character resipiscences about the most significant affair of her life, sacks also begins the novel when Allie is thirty-five, pregnant and married to a man that is not Eyel. As she looks back at her long-ago love of Eyel, she calls him her “ha-ex ha mitologi: the mythological ex.” That is, the man that changed everything. Allie muses how everyone can have at best one such totally transformative love in their lives, before children arrive to become the objects of such pure devotion.
The book is dedicated to “the one who lit my house on fire.”
This is a book about how a person can changed and be changed by other people. Throughout the dis-orienting ambivalence of the character and her search for belonging, it is this notion of love that stands above everything. A force beyond all other issues of identity, community, and complicity, maybe love alone is capable of saving people in a world so fueled by violence and betrayal. As with Sacks’ debut, this novel, while painful to read sometimes because you will not always admire the main character, is also a thought provoking journey into language and personal reinvention.
I loved it.
October 13, 2023
This is one of the most well written novels I’ve come across. Deeply probing and eerily gentle. The timing of this was a hard read given everything that has transpired this week in Palestine. The dread that held me in the end made my body tense. What a thing to behold- watching the villain unfurl like a flower in what was supposed to be a fated romance. This will stick with me for a long time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 16, 2023
honestly interesting how you slowly become less and less sympathetic to the narrator — unclear if that was the intention but that was my experience
[edit] upon further reflection i think that may be the point
[edit] upon further reflection i think that may be the point
January 18, 2024
I absolutely devoured this moving and timely book which builds so well on Duras's The Lover. It was so tender and thought-provoking in every way with an ending that made me nauseous (but in the best way). Bee, I don't know if you are on Goodreads/read these, but this was incredible!
August 23, 2023
Everything about this book was beautifully unique.
Allie moves to Israel and falls in love with Eyal, a young soldier eight years her junior. They experience a deep level of connection, and she is welcomed by his family as they all worry for him as he serves his country. This book is rich with insights into the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine.
Sacks wrote a romance that felt tender and true, despite the age gap. Both were on equal footing, so the focus wasn’t on the typical power imbalance. I love learning about parts of the world, and world events, that I know little of. This book really opened my eyes to the conflict in Gaza. I love how Sacks presents so many facts and a strong narrative without it ever feeling dense. Their writing is strong, and they strike a great balance with providing the intimate details that make a story feel real without it being distracting to the story.
I really enjoyed reading this one, and felt I got a lot out of it despite it being on the shorter side.
Allie moves to Israel and falls in love with Eyal, a young soldier eight years her junior. They experience a deep level of connection, and she is welcomed by his family as they all worry for him as he serves his country. This book is rich with insights into the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine.
Sacks wrote a romance that felt tender and true, despite the age gap. Both were on equal footing, so the focus wasn’t on the typical power imbalance. I love learning about parts of the world, and world events, that I know little of. This book really opened my eyes to the conflict in Gaza. I love how Sacks presents so many facts and a strong narrative without it ever feeling dense. Their writing is strong, and they strike a great balance with providing the intimate details that make a story feel real without it being distracting to the story.
I really enjoyed reading this one, and felt I got a lot out of it despite it being on the shorter side.
September 7, 2023
Thorny unanswerable questions about belonging, identity, politics, Israel, Palestine, justice, war, ways of looking and seeing, the elasticity of thought and justifications, and more are raised in this unsettling novel. Allison, now married and pregnant and living in Israel, was a 27-year-old grad student from Canada, via New York, studying there for a semester when she and 19-year-old Israeli solider Eyal fall in love. What seems almost a cliche, older woman, younger man, but also non-Israeli woman and Israeli solider, quickly moves into something far more complex and troubling. Allison, without a close family of her own, finds in Israel what she has been missing - feeling herself embraced by a whole country, even though she is never sure how to answer when asked if she is Jewish, because as the daughter of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother it's a claim she can't honestly make - but finds her way around - and is amazed by how instantly Eyal's family accepts her despite the age difference. What will affect their love isn't the eight years that separate them, but their changing views, brought into relief by war, when Israel invades Gaza. Cerebral and intellectual Allison is learning to silence and manipulate her own thoughts in order to keep what she has found, that sense of belonging, while pretending that she is still open-minded and indeed she deliberately befriends a Palestinian woman by pretending that she does not speak Hebrew, that she is not a Zionist, that she sees the Palestinian point of view. Her ability to torque and turn, her mental gymnastics, are already underway when Eyal begins to question Israel's actions in Gaza and by extension his own. Narrated mostly by Allison, it was odd when there were sections from Eyal's point of view, but it's a small quibble. A quite brilliant novel situating the complications of the political and perhaps the unresolvable political within a love affair.
Thanks to Harper and Netgalley for the ARC.
Thanks to Harper and Netgalley for the ARC.
March 23, 2024
DNF
white people realize they’re ugly and start going by they/them.
anyways can this author either 1) stop writing completely or 2) write about something else? as an arab, i’m… so? fucking confused? i can’t tell which side the authors on, but they seem so fucking privileged to be able to live in israel. you can’t be pro palestine and live there sorry. you will never understand the pain these innocent people are going through, their lives are being destroyed by a country you believe is beautiful and life changing.
there is no need to talk about israel positively, cuz trust me.. no one is gonna use these novels to learn about it. the vocab words were nice, but this just felt like them showing off everything they’ve learned while living there. i know it is possible for a soldier to fall in love while war is happening, but this felt tone deaf and badly written. there is a power imbalance with the age gap and their occupations (the age gap is legal, but allison acts so fucking stupid and braindead). they also genuinely have no chemistry other then “yeah you’re hot and the sex is good” LMAO? there is no romance, it’s all cliche.
i get heavy israel propaganda vibes in the way that it’s preaching “well! not every soldier wants to hurt these people!!” and then you look on social media and said soldiers are posing happily in gear and talking shit about INNOCENT PEOPLE SUFFERING AND DYING. the US military has a history of tricking men to join the army, but i’m almost certain israel is very transparent about what they’re “fighting” for. now, i know not every israeli is bad. that’s like saying every german is a nazi, but you cannot humanize israeli soldiers. hope this helps!
white people realize they’re ugly and start going by they/them.
anyways can this author either 1) stop writing completely or 2) write about something else? as an arab, i’m… so? fucking confused? i can’t tell which side the authors on, but they seem so fucking privileged to be able to live in israel. you can’t be pro palestine and live there sorry. you will never understand the pain these innocent people are going through, their lives are being destroyed by a country you believe is beautiful and life changing.
there is no need to talk about israel positively, cuz trust me.. no one is gonna use these novels to learn about it. the vocab words were nice, but this just felt like them showing off everything they’ve learned while living there. i know it is possible for a soldier to fall in love while war is happening, but this felt tone deaf and badly written. there is a power imbalance with the age gap and their occupations (the age gap is legal, but allison acts so fucking stupid and braindead). they also genuinely have no chemistry other then “yeah you’re hot and the sex is good” LMAO? there is no romance, it’s all cliche.
i get heavy israel propaganda vibes in the way that it’s preaching “well! not every soldier wants to hurt these people!!” and then you look on social media and said soldiers are posing happily in gear and talking shit about INNOCENT PEOPLE SUFFERING AND DYING. the US military has a history of tricking men to join the army, but i’m almost certain israel is very transparent about what they’re “fighting” for. now, i know not every israeli is bad. that’s like saying every german is a nazi, but you cannot humanize israeli soldiers. hope this helps!
July 22, 2023
I enjoyed the history deep dive I got while reading this book, but the love story was not for me.
In the beginning, I felt like I related a lot with the main character Allison. Then she became really pretentious, and then just downright unlikable. Perhaps that was the point.
A lot of it felt like the author just showing off everything they know about the Hebrew language, Israeli history, and life in Israel in general. With all of the random history musings (even making comparisons to Scotland?), the story felt so long-winded.
And as for Eyal and Allison’s love story, I could never root for them. It felt like they were playing pretend, living out some fantasy, seeing something that wasn’t there. They had nothing in common. (Perhaps that was the point… as the progression of the book might suggest.)
I cringed reading their texts and love letters to each other.
For example, Eyal texts her after a night tonight “I remember each of your ribs and each of your sighs.” Said no man ever.
Also the amount of times she told us he was 19!? We know.
Overall, I felt the most connected to the book at the beginning and end. The beginning scooped me and the end put me in my feels, particularly reading the parts of invading Gaza and the aftermath of that experience.
In the beginning, I felt like I related a lot with the main character Allison. Then she became really pretentious, and then just downright unlikable. Perhaps that was the point.
A lot of it felt like the author just showing off everything they know about the Hebrew language, Israeli history, and life in Israel in general. With all of the random history musings (even making comparisons to Scotland?), the story felt so long-winded.
And as for Eyal and Allison’s love story, I could never root for them. It felt like they were playing pretend, living out some fantasy, seeing something that wasn’t there. They had nothing in common. (Perhaps that was the point… as the progression of the book might suggest.)
I cringed reading their texts and love letters to each other.
For example, Eyal texts her after a night tonight “I remember each of your ribs and each of your sighs.” Said no man ever.
Also the amount of times she told us he was 19!? We know.
Overall, I felt the most connected to the book at the beginning and end. The beginning scooped me and the end put me in my feels, particularly reading the parts of invading Gaza and the aftermath of that experience.
November 10, 2023
4.5 stars. This is such a difficult review for me to write because so much is going on in this somewhat short novel. I think it’s very important to read narratives on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict and The Lover is a great book to start with. The author is a complete powerhouse and I’ll be looking for more of her work. She takes us on a romance adventure that quickly takes a turn and you realize that this book is not a romance but is centered around the creation of a villain. Our initial protagonist delves so slowly into a dark place that you barely realize how she got there. This book is subtle and gentle and an absolute must read for anyone.
July 7, 2023
This book cracked me wide open. Having been an ardent fan of Sacks’s work since CITY, I am bowled over once again — perhaps even more than I was in CITY — with their novel THE LOVER. Their writing is sublime. The subtle movements of the plot — and of Allie’s progression as a protagonist — continuously surprised me, often leaving me gasping as I turned the page. And the inevitable resolution left me audibly sobbing on the plane. Run to this book!!
August 29, 2025
Nádherná kniha, s výborným prekladom, kde čitateľstvo prežije príbeh lásky - k milému, k zemi, k slovám.
Nachádzanie samých seba neprinesie vždy len príjemné zistenia.
Nachádzanie samých seba neprinesie vždy len príjemné zistenia.
April 26, 2025
Kanaďanka jela studovat rabínskou literaturu do Izraele v rámci svého PhD programu. V Izraeli se zamilovala do vojáka, který se posléze musel účastnit invaze v Gaze. A ačkoliv se román nazývá Milenec, o vztah s vojákem úplně nejde. Hlavní postava Allison má úctu ke starověkému kulturnímu dědictví (jak jednoduché je propadnout něčemu tak starému, co se jakoby už ani nedotýká současnosti), a proto jede studovat do Izraele. Potkává se tam s židy, potkává se tam s arabskými židy, sleduje, jak se od sebe tyto skupiny obyvatel liší, jak se k sobě chovají, jak se vnímají. Kniha zobrazuje (nikoliv hájí) izraelský pohled na konflikt s Palestinci. A protože je to velmi dobře napsané, kniha vytváří velmi autentický a nevšední pohled na extrémně složitý a komplexní problém, který předkládá ze strany, kterou z žádné odborné publikace neuvidíte.
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June 7, 2023I’m not really sure what to rate this book. I really enjoyed the history and information I learned about Israel and Palestine. However, much of the writing I did not love because I did not like the “voice” of the main character. I also felt like the love story was a bit cliche for me.
October 20, 2023
interesting how this book was assigned now, but honestly couldn’t tell which side the author stands on? main character became more of a villain in my eyes near the end of the book.
March 11, 2025
3.5 rounded up to four stars for getting exactly the book I was hoping for..... whether I wanted it or not. I picked this book up despite knowing there was a strong romance vibe, just to get to the meat of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
The writing is really well done. Written with the knowledge of someone that has lived in the shoes of the character She is writing about. Bee Sacks has written a character in Allison that has mirrored her own personal path in life to some degree. One of the Jewish Acedemic that comes to Isreal to study history through language. I can Imagine there is a lot of life lived that is transferred to the page through the lens of her consciousness.
Allison is a Twenty-Seven-year-old studying abroad, who meets Eyal, a nineteen-year-old Soldier on the cusp of going to war on the Gaza strip. Rather than call this a Romance, which it does seem to model. I would call this a love story, mirrored to tragedy, as is life. Woven into the complex politics of the Middle east. Although it was the latter rather than the former that I came for, both sides weaved a compelling narrative into one.
I was very intrigued to find an insider's perspective on the struggle in Israel. I was happy that it strongly reflected both sides of the conflict and how it affected Allison's life and her relationships. As a good book should, it left me thinking long after I set it down. It was a fascinating character study of how a people think of themselves and their place in the world. I'm glad to have read it.
The writing is really well done. Written with the knowledge of someone that has lived in the shoes of the character She is writing about. Bee Sacks has written a character in Allison that has mirrored her own personal path in life to some degree. One of the Jewish Acedemic that comes to Isreal to study history through language. I can Imagine there is a lot of life lived that is transferred to the page through the lens of her consciousness.
Allison is a Twenty-Seven-year-old studying abroad, who meets Eyal, a nineteen-year-old Soldier on the cusp of going to war on the Gaza strip. Rather than call this a Romance, which it does seem to model. I would call this a love story, mirrored to tragedy, as is life. Woven into the complex politics of the Middle east. Although it was the latter rather than the former that I came for, both sides weaved a compelling narrative into one.
I was very intrigued to find an insider's perspective on the struggle in Israel. I was happy that it strongly reflected both sides of the conflict and how it affected Allison's life and her relationships. As a good book should, it left me thinking long after I set it down. It was a fascinating character study of how a people think of themselves and their place in the world. I'm glad to have read it.
August 4, 2023
Rebecca Sacks immediatly drew me in with their way of words on the page. I actually read a little slower than I usually do in order to savor their writing. The story is a sad one but beautifully told through Allison, a Canadian who is trying to find her sense of self while living in Tel Aviv during the invasion of Gaza in 2014. Sacks tries to give the reader the political views of both sides while they take us through Allison's romance with Eyal, an Israeli soldier. I found myself engrossed in their story and a little more educated about the conflict surrounding them. I truly enjoyed reading The Lover.
July 24, 2025
There are people dying. Children starving. Too soon!
April 1, 2024
Wow, a really powerful read. I was looking for something to give voice to this moment and I found that and so much more. Will be siting with this one for a long time.
August 8, 2023
The Lover is a gorgeous book that I devoured in one day. What starts as a sweet may-December love story quickly turns into a haunting exploration of belonging, nationality, community, violence, and power. Just wow! There were so many moments of the book where I was stunned by the beauty of the prose. Rebecca Sacks manages to find the humanity behind all of their characters as they search for meaning and security. The books oscillates between incisive reflections on human interpersonal relations to incisive reflections on larger political systems in a seamless way, really showing how the two are the same! A really special book.
June 6, 2025
What an amazing pov of how you can be radicalized
November 3, 2023
I listened to this book.
As an audio experience, I don’t know how Rebecca Sacks spelled her characters’ names. If I get a minute, I’ll look them up and come correct them.
Not much fell flat for me with this book, so I’ll begin there.
Aisha. I like her. She is easy to like. Unlike Allie and Erika and Eyal, she is a one dimensional character. So are Allie’s parents and Timor and others, but I think it matters with Aisha. I wasn’t shown her humanity as an individual. I only saw her as a representative of a people. As a symbol of the Palestinian people of Nazareth, she’s a non-hijabi wearing very cool Muslim young woman who crops her shirts to show her belly button. The family’s stories also seemed like a composite. I had trouble feeling like I knew her. I cared about her more because I cared about a man Eyal saw later. And because of the way Allie treated her, which is no way to treat anyone.
I wish Aisha were a more full and complex character.
Israel. We mostly see Israel through Allie’s very shallow way of being human. Let’s be honest, if you identify with Allie it will make you uncomfortable - and it should. The ways I see Allie in myself are disturbing and illuminating. I have been her. Not always. But there have been times. I’m not proud of those times. Listening to this book has had me thinking about the hours during which I was deciding that yes, I would leave Israel and come back home. The person I dated wasn’t a soldier. Anyway if you don’t identify with Allie, I think you’ll also be uncomfortable. The ways she is not in me but is in people I know, and even love. Whether or not we like Allie isn’t even the point. It’s not even the question. Or at least, I think it’s the wrong question. She doesn’t exist to be liked or not liked.
Now.
This book.
When I put it on hold I didn’t know there would be another war. I didn’t know it would become available after a massacre of Jews and a bombing of Gazans. I didn’t know. And because of everything I almost sent it back when it became available.
I am thankful I didn’t.
I’ve read some articles by and about the author and between them and this book my mind is twisting and turning around some very hard, uncomfortable, and important corners.
It’s not only that there are conflicting narratives that are true to those telling them.
I know this.
I read history.
There are narratives built on story and myth that have just enough historical elements to make them seem plausible.
Listening to people right now, listening to this book, listening to the news, I am wrestling with whether any history is true. Because what is true now? How do we know? Are you sure? I’m not.
Rather than there being different historical perspectives - is it possible to even know, actually, what happened? And when we say we are “owning our history” - what does that even mean?
Maybe it just means we get to be self-righteous.
I have a degree in history.
I think of myself as a historian sometimes.
But this history?
We can’t have PTSD until after the trauma ends, right?
So when does it end?
Speaking of -
I love the end of this book.
I love it.
It’s totally unsatisfying.
As an audio experience, I don’t know how Rebecca Sacks spelled her characters’ names. If I get a minute, I’ll look them up and come correct them.
Not much fell flat for me with this book, so I’ll begin there.
Aisha. I like her. She is easy to like. Unlike Allie and Erika and Eyal, she is a one dimensional character. So are Allie’s parents and Timor and others, but I think it matters with Aisha. I wasn’t shown her humanity as an individual. I only saw her as a representative of a people. As a symbol of the Palestinian people of Nazareth, she’s a non-hijabi wearing very cool Muslim young woman who crops her shirts to show her belly button. The family’s stories also seemed like a composite. I had trouble feeling like I knew her. I cared about her more because I cared about a man Eyal saw later. And because of the way Allie treated her, which is no way to treat anyone.
I wish Aisha were a more full and complex character.
Israel. We mostly see Israel through Allie’s very shallow way of being human. Let’s be honest, if you identify with Allie it will make you uncomfortable - and it should. The ways I see Allie in myself are disturbing and illuminating. I have been her. Not always. But there have been times. I’m not proud of those times. Listening to this book has had me thinking about the hours during which I was deciding that yes, I would leave Israel and come back home. The person I dated wasn’t a soldier. Anyway if you don’t identify with Allie, I think you’ll also be uncomfortable. The ways she is not in me but is in people I know, and even love. Whether or not we like Allie isn’t even the point. It’s not even the question. Or at least, I think it’s the wrong question. She doesn’t exist to be liked or not liked.
Now.
This book.
When I put it on hold I didn’t know there would be another war. I didn’t know it would become available after a massacre of Jews and a bombing of Gazans. I didn’t know. And because of everything I almost sent it back when it became available.
I am thankful I didn’t.
I’ve read some articles by and about the author and between them and this book my mind is twisting and turning around some very hard, uncomfortable, and important corners.
It’s not only that there are conflicting narratives that are true to those telling them.
I know this.
I read history.
There are narratives built on story and myth that have just enough historical elements to make them seem plausible.
Listening to people right now, listening to this book, listening to the news, I am wrestling with whether any history is true. Because what is true now? How do we know? Are you sure? I’m not.
Rather than there being different historical perspectives - is it possible to even know, actually, what happened? And when we say we are “owning our history” - what does that even mean?
Maybe it just means we get to be self-righteous.
I have a degree in history.
I think of myself as a historian sometimes.
But this history?
We can’t have PTSD until after the trauma ends, right?
So when does it end?
Speaking of -
I love the end of this book.
I love it.
It’s totally unsatisfying.
August 9, 2023
"God, I can still feel him. I am thirty-five years old, married and pregnant, but I can still feel him. As if all the years and changes, my marriage, my mortgage, my career---all of that was just a coda to the summer that Eyal and I were in love, and he was at war." So ends The Lover's first chapter, and so our narrator Allison begins her story, finding herself as Moses did, with the future at his back, and eyes on the past. Allison tells of how she transformed herself irrevocably the summer of 2014, while she was studying at Tel Aviv University and her boyfriend Eyal was one of many Israeli soldiers sent to invade Gaza. Slowly, ever since her arrival in Israel, which she finds a warm and inviting country, a contrast to the coldness of Canada and her family there, and then quickly, once Israel launches its latest invasion, Allison lets herself be pulled deeper into ideology. She loves becoming Israeli, being seen as such, feeling as if at last she could belong. She is part of a community, she is loved, and she is willing to make moral compromises because she knows she will be loved by her community for doing so. It feels better to give in, to stop thinking, to accept what others have already decided is right. When her sister Erica's partner challenges Allison's newfound Zionism, Allison thinks: "A vicious thought came to me: Cee would have no value in Israel. Not a Jew, not a man, not a woman. In Israel, I mattered, and they did not matter...and it comforted me." The Lover is genuinely unsettling reading in the best way, in its excavations and revelations, in its honesty, and Sacks is brave for writing the novel in the first-person (I assume some readers will conflate the author with Allison, or misunderstand the novel's aim and ambitions). Allison and Eyal haunt each other through distance, through letters that Allison still keeps and reads. At the end of the novel, we know where Allison is and who she has become; I wondered about Eyal. He returned that summer from Gaza changed, traumatized. "When he texted me from visits with family---the stuffy home of his paternal grandparents or the suburban pool of an aunt---he seemed bored and agitated: THEY ASK ABOUT ANYTHING BUT GAZA."
August 29, 2023
1 1/2 stars - While Rebecca Sacks’s debut novel, City of a Thousand Gates, was flawed, this one is very problematic. The more I listened the less I liked the book and the main character, Allie. She seemed very immature and naïve for a 27-year-old PhD student. It would’ve been much more realistic and plausible for a 22 or 23 year old Canadian student to date a 19-year-old Israeli soldier. Plus, Allie and Eyal's relationship is too perfect. They never have a single argument or disagreement despite their 8-year age difference, their language barrier and cultural differences. I never figured out what their relationship was based on besides physical attraction and sex.
Additionally, for a seemingly intelligent and thoughtful student, Allie absorbs and accepts anything anyone tells her and takes it at face value. Whether it’s her boyfriend, her Mizrachi roommate, her sister, her Arab Israeli friend, or her Hebrew tutor, she never attempts to investigate or learn anything on her own. She doesn’t read the newspaper, watch the news, or read a book. While she sometimes poses questions in her head, she never asks them out loud. She never pushes back to force anyone to explain their opinion, provide her with more information, or expand her understanding. Therefore, the reader isn't exposed to the real complexity of contemporary Israel. Through her characters, Rebecca Sacks makes statements and observations about the conflict, the political situation, and life in Israel and the West Bank & Gaza without providing any context. It’s not that these statements are necessarily false, but they are over-simplified (to the point of distortion) and very misleading.
Gabi Epstein was a fantastic narrator and I really appreciated that she pronounced all of the Hebrew words correctly and authentically. The male narrator for Eyal's parts was stiff and lacked expression and emotion. But regardless, I felt that his voice interrupted the narrative and didn’t really add to the story which was really all about Allie. Sacks either needed to make it a dual narrative and give him more equal coverage or leave him out completely.
While I am curious to hear what others think of this book, I don't really recommend it!
Additionally, for a seemingly intelligent and thoughtful student, Allie absorbs and accepts anything anyone tells her and takes it at face value. Whether it’s her boyfriend, her Mizrachi roommate, her sister, her Arab Israeli friend, or her Hebrew tutor, she never attempts to investigate or learn anything on her own. She doesn’t read the newspaper, watch the news, or read a book. While she sometimes poses questions in her head, she never asks them out loud. She never pushes back to force anyone to explain their opinion, provide her with more information, or expand her understanding. Therefore, the reader isn't exposed to the real complexity of contemporary Israel. Through her characters, Rebecca Sacks makes statements and observations about the conflict, the political situation, and life in Israel and the West Bank & Gaza without providing any context. It’s not that these statements are necessarily false, but they are over-simplified (to the point of distortion) and very misleading.
Gabi Epstein was a fantastic narrator and I really appreciated that she pronounced all of the Hebrew words correctly and authentically. The male narrator for Eyal's parts was stiff and lacked expression and emotion. But regardless, I felt that his voice interrupted the narrative and didn’t really add to the story which was really all about Allie. Sacks either needed to make it a dual narrative and give him more equal coverage or leave him out completely.
While I am curious to hear what others think of this book, I don't really recommend it!
November 21, 2023
This wonderful novel centers around the story between Allison, a 27 year old from Canada studying in Israel, and Eyal, a 19 year old Israeli soldier, as they fall in love during a tumultuous time. We experience beautiful descriptions of finding and falling in love as well as descriptions of harsh realities such as loss, discrimination, fear, and war.
While reading, I really struggled with the main character, Allie. We see her desperate need to be liked and wanted, always searching for a place of acceptance, often at the expense of others. While it is entirely human to seek out this sense of belonging, she constantly lies about herself, her beliefs, her feelings, her thoughts, all in the hope of finding acceptance in wherever she is or whomever she is with at that time. Then when it is discovered by the various people she was lying to that she wasn’t who she made herself out to be, she plays the victim and is incapable of seeing her wrongdoings and how her actions and words hurt others. It is not hard to recognize these patterns as she loses relationships with family, friends, and partners. Despite the main character’s at times intense dislikable qualities, as the reader, you are still so enthralled in the story, which I believe is a testament to Sacks writing and storytelling abilities.
Reading this now, as well, was especially poignant given the current situation happening in the world today between Israel and Palestine. This novel allows us as the reader to catch a glimpse into the struggles both physically and mentally that people are currently facing every day and I truly believe everyone would benefit from reading it.
Overall, an extremely well written and tragically beautiful story about love, acceptance, and belonging.
Thank you to HarperCollins and Goodreads for this ARC.
While reading, I really struggled with the main character, Allie. We see her desperate need to be liked and wanted, always searching for a place of acceptance, often at the expense of others. While it is entirely human to seek out this sense of belonging, she constantly lies about herself, her beliefs, her feelings, her thoughts, all in the hope of finding acceptance in wherever she is or whomever she is with at that time. Then when it is discovered by the various people she was lying to that she wasn’t who she made herself out to be, she plays the victim and is incapable of seeing her wrongdoings and how her actions and words hurt others. It is not hard to recognize these patterns as she loses relationships with family, friends, and partners. Despite the main character’s at times intense dislikable qualities, as the reader, you are still so enthralled in the story, which I believe is a testament to Sacks writing and storytelling abilities.
Reading this now, as well, was especially poignant given the current situation happening in the world today between Israel and Palestine. This novel allows us as the reader to catch a glimpse into the struggles both physically and mentally that people are currently facing every day and I truly believe everyone would benefit from reading it.
Overall, an extremely well written and tragically beautiful story about love, acceptance, and belonging.
Thank you to HarperCollins and Goodreads for this ARC.
September 29, 2024
4/5*
“Budeš žít ve vězení vlastního strachu.”
Kniha se točí okolo rozpolcené hlavní hrdinky, která odjela na studijní pobyt do Izraele (z otcovy strany Židovka) a našla zde domov, jakýsi pocit sounáležitosti. Nyní těhotná a vdaná vzpomíná na svou první velkou lásku, vojáka Ejala, a taky na své univerzitní roky. Z pohledu mladého Ejala zase můžeme nahlédnout do vojenského prostředí, na které je v zemi pohlíženo s velkým respektem (z naší perspektivy asi nepříliš pochopitelné). Jejich vztah působí na začátku idylicky, postupem času však uvadá a oba zjišťují, že si možná do toho druhého promítli jisté domněnky, jež se nezakládaly na pravdě. Následuje pocit prozření a hledání vlastní životní cesty.
Hlavní postava, Allison, na škole potkává heterogenní směsici lidí a pokouší se proklestit si cestu k pravdě ohledně odvěkého konfliktu. Ve výsledku dochází k poznání, že pravda není univerzální a každá rodina si pamatuje minulost jinak, skrze vlastní zážitky či vyprávění svých předků. Dochází také na debatu “kdo je správným Židem” a “není Žid jako Žid”. Do textu je velmi zdařile zakomponována filologie a postavení jazyka a jeho proměny v čase, přičemž změny v něm se snoubí se změnami ve sféře lidské.
Kladně hodnotím neutrálnost textu, kterážto poukazuje na klady i zápory obou stran (kupříkladu rozdílné pohledy na události roku 1948). Knihu rozhodně doporučuji, téma je stále aktuální a celý konflikt, bohužel, nemíří ke svému konci. Vně dané konfrontace a rozbrojů stojí dvě skupiny, které si nemohou přijít na jméno (v textu jedno stanovisko zastoupeno Allisoninou nebinární sestrou) a jak to musí snášet osoby, které jsou přímo uvnitř každodenních bojů (fyzického i psychického charakteru), se můžeme pouze domnívat.
“Budeš žít ve vězení vlastního strachu.”
Kniha se točí okolo rozpolcené hlavní hrdinky, která odjela na studijní pobyt do Izraele (z otcovy strany Židovka) a našla zde domov, jakýsi pocit sounáležitosti. Nyní těhotná a vdaná vzpomíná na svou první velkou lásku, vojáka Ejala, a taky na své univerzitní roky. Z pohledu mladého Ejala zase můžeme nahlédnout do vojenského prostředí, na které je v zemi pohlíženo s velkým respektem (z naší perspektivy asi nepříliš pochopitelné). Jejich vztah působí na začátku idylicky, postupem času však uvadá a oba zjišťují, že si možná do toho druhého promítli jisté domněnky, jež se nezakládaly na pravdě. Následuje pocit prozření a hledání vlastní životní cesty.
Hlavní postava, Allison, na škole potkává heterogenní směsici lidí a pokouší se proklestit si cestu k pravdě ohledně odvěkého konfliktu. Ve výsledku dochází k poznání, že pravda není univerzální a každá rodina si pamatuje minulost jinak, skrze vlastní zážitky či vyprávění svých předků. Dochází také na debatu “kdo je správným Židem” a “není Žid jako Žid”. Do textu je velmi zdařile zakomponována filologie a postavení jazyka a jeho proměny v čase, přičemž změny v něm se snoubí se změnami ve sféře lidské.
Kladně hodnotím neutrálnost textu, kterážto poukazuje na klady i zápory obou stran (kupříkladu rozdílné pohledy na události roku 1948). Knihu rozhodně doporučuji, téma je stále aktuální a celý konflikt, bohužel, nemíří ke svému konci. Vně dané konfrontace a rozbrojů stojí dvě skupiny, které si nemohou přijít na jméno (v textu jedno stanovisko zastoupeno Allisoninou nebinární sestrou) a jak to musí snášet osoby, které jsou přímo uvnitř každodenních bojů (fyzického i psychického charakteru), se můžeme pouze domnívat.
December 22, 2023
*Partial spoiler*
Beginning from a saccharine and underdeveloped story of young courtship and love, this novel grows into an intimate depiction of how social privilege is bestowed in Israel, particularly for non-Orthodox Westerners who come to Israel. The story demonstrates how our love and care for a partner can (even without their permission) drive us to fight or defend systems of oppression within which they play (i.e., the protagonist's boyfriend is a young IDF soldier). As her soldier BF goes into service, the protagonist develops a strong and anxious curiosity in finding a Palestinian friend (borne from superficial concern with her self-image vis-a-vis a more "woke" sister). This friendship is ignored once her desire for a token "Palestinian experience" is satisfied, and eventually thrown away once the protagonist's convenient lies no longer cover her Zionism and desire to defend her love amid a traumatizing outbreak of Israel-Hamas war.
The protagonist clearly spends the novel shape-shifting, balancing nuance and conscience with desire to fit perfectly among Israeli friends and family, and reconciling her beliefs with approval of family in her home country. This makes for a unique vessel to explore the Israel/Palestine conflict. If you can hold your breath through an uninteresting love story, a wonderful read or listen if one is curious about modern Israeli life and how people intimately reconcile conflicting relationships, emotions, and beliefs within in a violent society.
Beginning from a saccharine and underdeveloped story of young courtship and love, this novel grows into an intimate depiction of how social privilege is bestowed in Israel, particularly for non-Orthodox Westerners who come to Israel. The story demonstrates how our love and care for a partner can (even without their permission) drive us to fight or defend systems of oppression within which they play (i.e., the protagonist's boyfriend is a young IDF soldier). As her soldier BF goes into service, the protagonist develops a strong and anxious curiosity in finding a Palestinian friend (borne from superficial concern with her self-image vis-a-vis a more "woke" sister). This friendship is ignored once her desire for a token "Palestinian experience" is satisfied, and eventually thrown away once the protagonist's convenient lies no longer cover her Zionism and desire to defend her love amid a traumatizing outbreak of Israel-Hamas war.
The protagonist clearly spends the novel shape-shifting, balancing nuance and conscience with desire to fit perfectly among Israeli friends and family, and reconciling her beliefs with approval of family in her home country. This makes for a unique vessel to explore the Israel/Palestine conflict. If you can hold your breath through an uninteresting love story, a wonderful read or listen if one is curious about modern Israeli life and how people intimately reconcile conflicting relationships, emotions, and beliefs within in a violent society.
October 8, 2023
Allison is a graduate student from Canada studying for a few months at Tel Aviv University. This petite, blonde young lady is asked about her identity from the moment she arrives, “You don’t look Jewish” the taxi driver questions her. Allison studies words, ancient texts and languages. She has a strained relationship with her sister and an unexceptional one with her parents. Allie wants to explore the world, she dreams of falling in love. One day on a bus ride a soldier sits next to her. Eyal strikes up a conversation and although he is clearly younger, their chemistry is undeniable. They fall passionately in love. Despite their age difference it is probably the most profound feelings either of them has ever had. His family quickly folds Allie into their comfortable nest and she has never been happier. As she tries to find a grant to extend her stay, Allie befriends a fellow student at the University who is Palestinian. To Allie she is exotic, beautiful and mysterious and with no ill intent initially, Allie is compelled to get closer to her. At the same time Eyal must go on a dangerous mission into Gaza. As Allie examines the complicated emotions that heighten with Eyal and her new secret friendship, she cannot deny that her sister’s harsh criticisms are making more sense. The writing is exquisite in this heartfelt, meaningful look at self exploration in a not so perfect world. I truly could not put this one down.
May 1, 2024
I can’t stop thinking about this love affair. It’s been months since I finished reading the book, but Allison and Eyal (and Timor, Aisha, Talia, and so many others) continue to occupy my thoughts, not least because the war in Gaza and the horrors that plague Palestine and Palestinians, Israeli and Israelis, remains on-going.
The Lover is a timely novel, as one which revolves around that very political and cultural conflict. But the novel offers a social perspective on how politics hits the ground, how real lives are shaped by the tragedy. The short of it, as I think most people understand, is that the situation is messy. Israelis and Palestinians, Jewish, Arab, each and every one, is woven into a fabric that cannot be unpicked, their threads too tightly interlaced for any one to be extracted without fraying, snapping, leaving a scar in the cloth. The Lover highlights that messiness, the ethical messiness, the material messiness, the psychological and emotional turmoil of Palestine and Israel.
The Lover is a love story, a romance between Allison, a half-Jewish American graduate student who has come to Israel for a semester abroad, and Eyal, a soldier in the Israeli army. To fulfill his military duty, Eyal must conduct missions in Gaza, while Allison frets and waits for his return. But there is another romance here: Allison’s as she becomes enraptured with Israel and the tensions between Jews and Arabs. This is a novel about the ethics of love, what authentic compatibility means, and the difference between passion and compassion between lovers.
What makes The Lover so compelling is that the intertwined romances here force us to confront our own biases in this or other situations. This is a story we cannot turn away from, because even as outsiders watching the news, looking in on the events in Gaza, its messiness forces us to consider what we each might do, might have to do in a similar situation.
The story, as darkly riveting as it is, is not the novels only attraction. The Lover is superbly written. This is literary fiction at its most devastating. Sacks has also clearly done an incredible amount of research, and what might be understood as ethnographic observation; the novel’s environs are so real as to transport the reader to that place, to Israel, to Gaza. The tension Sacks develops through combining research with literature results in a palpable immersion for the reader.
Moreover, Sacks’ characters are fleshy, flawed, and real. Allison is its main protagonist; it is through her voice, her thoughts, that the story is narrated (though she is not its only narrator). Readers cannot help but feel her anxiety, her excitement; as Allison falls deeper in love with Israel, readers may find they are uncomfortably immersed in Allison’s mind. This is a testament to Sacks skill with words.
The Lover is a novel I will likely return to again, perhaps more than once.
The Lover is a timely novel, as one which revolves around that very political and cultural conflict. But the novel offers a social perspective on how politics hits the ground, how real lives are shaped by the tragedy. The short of it, as I think most people understand, is that the situation is messy. Israelis and Palestinians, Jewish, Arab, each and every one, is woven into a fabric that cannot be unpicked, their threads too tightly interlaced for any one to be extracted without fraying, snapping, leaving a scar in the cloth. The Lover highlights that messiness, the ethical messiness, the material messiness, the psychological and emotional turmoil of Palestine and Israel.
The Lover is a love story, a romance between Allison, a half-Jewish American graduate student who has come to Israel for a semester abroad, and Eyal, a soldier in the Israeli army. To fulfill his military duty, Eyal must conduct missions in Gaza, while Allison frets and waits for his return. But there is another romance here: Allison’s as she becomes enraptured with Israel and the tensions between Jews and Arabs. This is a novel about the ethics of love, what authentic compatibility means, and the difference between passion and compassion between lovers.
What makes The Lover so compelling is that the intertwined romances here force us to confront our own biases in this or other situations. This is a story we cannot turn away from, because even as outsiders watching the news, looking in on the events in Gaza, its messiness forces us to consider what we each might do, might have to do in a similar situation.
The story, as darkly riveting as it is, is not the novels only attraction. The Lover is superbly written. This is literary fiction at its most devastating. Sacks has also clearly done an incredible amount of research, and what might be understood as ethnographic observation; the novel’s environs are so real as to transport the reader to that place, to Israel, to Gaza. The tension Sacks develops through combining research with literature results in a palpable immersion for the reader.
Moreover, Sacks’ characters are fleshy, flawed, and real. Allison is its main protagonist; it is through her voice, her thoughts, that the story is narrated (though she is not its only narrator). Readers cannot help but feel her anxiety, her excitement; as Allison falls deeper in love with Israel, readers may find they are uncomfortably immersed in Allison’s mind. This is a testament to Sacks skill with words.
The Lover is a novel I will likely return to again, perhaps more than once.
July 14, 2024
Milenec - Rebecca Sacks
*****************************
Obálka: 4*
Hlavní postavy: 4*
Děj: 3,5*
@knihybeta #spoluprace
Kdo mě sleduje delší dobu ví, že nečtu anotace. Knihu opravdu soudím podle obalu. Jsem obálkofil a netajím se tím. Proto vám hned na úvod musím říct, že tato obálka má nádherný materiál. Když si na ni šáhnete, tak máte pocit, že se dotýkáte nějaké látky a ne papírové obálky. Materiál mě naprosto uhranul. Co do námětu obálky bych měla připomínky - za mě nevystihuje obsah knihy a raději bych na ní viděla například vojáka nastupujícího do vlaku.
Obsahově jde o knihu, na kterou je potřeba se soustředit. Velmi důležité informace, témata a pohled na válku v Gaze ze všech stran. Kniha nabídne pohled palestinců, pohled izraelců, pohled vojáka, pohled milenky vojáka i pohled rodičů a cizinců v zahraničí. Pokud nejste odborníky na toto téma (stejně jako já), pak budete sosat informace jako houba vodu. Za mě nádherně zachycené problémy, denní konflikty i pocity člověka, který žije v Izraeli, ale sympatizuje s araby.
Líbí se mi, že kniha obsahuje hebrejsky psané části, které jsou zároveň nenásilně přeloženy. Knize to tak dodává autentičnost.
Pokud chcete poznat život v Tel Avivu, detailněji navnímat situaci v Gaze, pak je tato kniha tím správným krokem. Nenásilné podání na pozadí velké mladé lásky.
Celkové hodnocení: 3,75* z 5*
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Obálka: 4*
Hlavní postavy: 4*
Děj: 3,5*
@knihybeta #spoluprace
Kdo mě sleduje delší dobu ví, že nečtu anotace. Knihu opravdu soudím podle obalu. Jsem obálkofil a netajím se tím. Proto vám hned na úvod musím říct, že tato obálka má nádherný materiál. Když si na ni šáhnete, tak máte pocit, že se dotýkáte nějaké látky a ne papírové obálky. Materiál mě naprosto uhranul. Co do námětu obálky bych měla připomínky - za mě nevystihuje obsah knihy a raději bych na ní viděla například vojáka nastupujícího do vlaku.
Obsahově jde o knihu, na kterou je potřeba se soustředit. Velmi důležité informace, témata a pohled na válku v Gaze ze všech stran. Kniha nabídne pohled palestinců, pohled izraelců, pohled vojáka, pohled milenky vojáka i pohled rodičů a cizinců v zahraničí. Pokud nejste odborníky na toto téma (stejně jako já), pak budete sosat informace jako houba vodu. Za mě nádherně zachycené problémy, denní konflikty i pocity člověka, který žije v Izraeli, ale sympatizuje s araby.
Líbí se mi, že kniha obsahuje hebrejsky psané části, které jsou zároveň nenásilně přeloženy. Knize to tak dodává autentičnost.
Pokud chcete poznat život v Tel Avivu, detailněji navnímat situaci v Gaze, pak je tato kniha tím správným krokem. Nenásilné podání na pozadí velké mladé lásky.
Celkové hodnocení: 3,75* z 5*
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