Arta de a-ți lua rămas-bun

by Ayelet Tsabari, Ioana-Raluca Flangea (trad.)

O poveste de viață

Israeliană de origine yemenită emigrată în Canada, Ayelet Tsabari este purtătoarea unei identități complexe ale cărei fire se întrețes într-un destin plin de culoare și farmec. La doar nouă ani, Ayelet își pierde tatăl, avocat și poet, stâlp al comunității dintr-un orășel de lângă Tel Aviv. Rămasă singură cu mama și cei cinci frați, devine o tânără rebelă care caută să fugă de orice i-ar putea îngrădi libertatea: de trecutul strămoșilor ostracizați social, de autoritatea maternă sau de cea militară, de căsătorie. Călătorește cu rucsacul în spate prin India, Thailanda, Europa, America de Nord și Canada. Curând, faptul de a lăsa în urmă joburi, prieteni și relații devine pentru ea „acasă“. După multe căutări, se reîntoarce în Israel, unde cercetează trecutul familiei de migranți din care se trage, dezgropând un secret rămas sub tăcere mulți ani. Dragostea pentru cei care au precedat-o îi reaprinde, în cele din urmă, pasiunea pentru scris, o ajută să se împace cu identitatea de evreică mizrahi și cu propriul destin de emigrant.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Jewish, Israel, Travel, Book Club, Judaism

360 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2019

About the author

Ayelet Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and has been published internationally. She’s the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language and has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing and The University of King’s College MFA. Her novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted is forthcoming with Random House and HarperCollins Canada in September 2024.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell head over heals the first time I read “The Best Place on Earth”, by Ayelet Tsabari. The collection of short stories each stands alone - but the themes blend together — life in Israel, ( society, culture, night life, customs, the military, the threat of living with violence, identity, relationships between lovers, family, and friends), Israelis who migrated to Canada, with a focus on Mizrahi and Yemeni Jews. Each story so personal - the characters come alive.
The stories are really captivating- personal - relatable - and totally enjoyable.
Many months later, our local book club loved these stories, too.


“The Art of Leaving”, - essays - is Ayelet’s memoir.
Her essays blend together in the same way her short stories did in “The Best Place on Earth”. Themes center around growing up: childhood. adolescence, and young adult.
Her book is divided into three sections: HOME, LEAVING, & RETURN. Within these sections - are individual stories representing stages & ages of Ayelet’s life.

This was ‘tons’ more enjoyable than I was expecting. I saw this book on Netgalley - early- but didn’t jump to read it.
Many thanks to Esil ( her review is wonderful), for being my ‘jump-to-it ‘ inspiration.
I had justified my ‘waiting’.....( maybe our Jewish book club will read it later?/!
Point is I had forgotten how incredibly personal - raw - touching - and sparklingly enjoyable it is to read Ayelet’s prose.

Moving - funny at times - soulful - tender - unique personal colorful stories.
I related - closely with Ayelet.
Ayelet lost her father to death at age 10. I was 4 when my dad died.
But those questions that remained with Ayelet her entire life growing up without a father - are the same questions - I’ve lived with too.

Ayelet’s father died during the night when she was sleeping - (same for me).
I related to this except .....(she wrote words that fit exactly what I went through, too)
“I will sleep an entire night ignorant of that loss, and the next morning, I will wake up still knowing, un-orphaned ( and for the first few weeks after his death, every morning will begin with the same blissful amnesia before I am hijacked by remembering”).

After the horrible news ..... Ayelet says:
“That moment, crystallized in my memory through the fog of grief, will be the fork in the road where my future splits in two: what could have happened had he lived and what happened because he didn’t. And as they grow up, I will try to live as wildly and loudly as I can to outdo the enormity of this moment, to diminish it”.
WOW! Thank you Ayelet Tsabari!!!

Ayelet’s personal journey continued to sneak up on me and by the time I got to the end -( she lives her life with gusto), I was wishing to know her more.....as in hang out!

I’ll never hesitate again about reading Ayelet’s books. This woman can write!!!

Thank you Random House, Netgalley, and Ayelet Tsabari

P.S. I share the say May 24th birthday with Ayelet 🎂

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8 stars for the land of cool metaphors

This memoir is by an Israeli who lived in several countries and tells of her emotional journal. The book is very smart. It didn’t knock my socks off, like the author’s collection of short stories, The Best Place on Earth, did. Ah, but never mind-- there’s a full Joy Jar, lots of shout-outs. Yes, of course there are some complaints, but the joys outnumbered them.

Joy Jar

-Metaphors galore. And I mean good ones. The author gets an A-plus in this department—just wow. She seems to do it with an economy of words, no fluff, and the images form instantly, sharp in your mind. There’s atmosphere out the ying-yang. Get a load of these sentences:

“It’s April and cool for the season, the breeze a thin, silky scarf. The sky is the color of white linen that was accidentally laundered with a blue sock.”

“The sky is mucky and grey, an ashtray left on a rainy porch.”

“Lights burn yellow holes in the dark buildings.”

-She’s a total bad ass. I don’t know why, but when a person come across as a very serious writer, you aren’t expecting a wild child who smokes cigarettes and has carried an Uzi (she did mandatory military service). You just don’t. There are many wild stories, but no need for me to ruin the surprise. I just loved the bad-ass parts, and they reminded me of her fantastic short story collection.

-Loved the introspection. There is a lot of interior emotions and self-examination, which I adore. I liked her struggle to become a writer. The drive to write was always a part of her, sometimes buried deep, and getting there took a while.

-Loved her adventures and chronicle of her relationships. She makes everything juicy but in a quiet way. She had one traumatic thing happen to her, which was harrowing.

-Loved to visit different continents. The author went back and forth between Israel and Canada many times, trying to find home. She also did a long stint in India. Her life in the different countries was fascinating.

A great sentence about how you feel on landing in a foreign country:

“Everything was coated with the surreal haze that followed extended air travel, tinged with strangeness and fatigue, the inconceivability of being here, now.”

-A woman in search of a home. She was constantly trying to figure out why she liked to leave instead of stay, and she had interesting ideas about the concept of home.

“As a roving twenty-something, I enjoyed toying with the idea of home as if it was a fluid negotiable term, a mental RV, a headspace.”

-I’m a complete wuss; please don’t sting me! I’m not going to lie--I was unchy and afraid when I saw there was an entire chapter about hornets. Can I help it that I have a bee phobia? I blame my mother, who went running around the yard screaming every time she saw one. Anyway, I loved this chapter even though I was biting my nails half the time and looking out furtively for hornets.

-Liked learning about Jews from Yemen who live in Israel. Fascinating culture, and the author chronicles it well. Jews from Yemen are treated as inferior by other Jews in Israel, and this prejudice affects her deeply.

Complaint Board

-How am I supposed to give a hoot? I appreciate (and usually tear up) when I hear tributes for people I’ve known and loved, and famous people I’ve liked. The author spends a lot of time talking about her dad and his greatness. He seriously sounds like a cool man, but her praise goes on and on and is monotonous and meaningless to me since I didn’t know him. Way too much on daddy-poo. Sorry. (I know, I know, I sound callous, but can I help it that I’ve ingested some truth serum?)

-Just too much about family traditions and history. I know I said I liked the culture part, but there was too much talk of her heritage and traditions. It became a snooze, especially compared to her relationships and adventures, which showed a brazen, rebellious, and overall wild chick. There were also too many relatives to keep track of. The last chapters were especially heritage-centric.

-Give me more adventure. The metaphors were truly great, but they require work. Drama and dialogue are my thing.

-Can we stay out of the kitchen? Pretty please… I don’t cook, so describing how the author’s mother makes food doesn’t turn me on. Nor does a wholesome hang-out session in the kitchen. There’s a whole (what felt like a long) chapter on recipes! Many details of ingredients. (And way too much cilantro!) A mom who is Betty Crocker even though she’s an exotic one, bores me to tears and makes me want to go out back and chug some beer—and I don’t even drink beer. I did find myself not totally hating the chapter, only because Tsabari is such a skilled writer she can get away with it—a little. Here’s a great sentence about her cooker mom:

“She disappeared into the kitchen, became one with the appliances. Food replaced her words; cooking became her currency.”

The author probably could write about a phone book and I’d be happy. Still, I’m in a snit about the whole recipe thing. It was supposed to be very yum yum but instead it was a big ho hum.

-Motherhood, oh dear. I wasn’t impressed with her thoughts about motherhood, which has nothing to do with the merit of the book. It’s just that sometimes we like to relate. I’m going to stay mum re mum-land in case you want to read this book.

And to sum up…
I would have liked the whole book to be just about her adventures, relationships, and self-analysis, which reminded me of her rich short stories. But her language and metaphors are just brilliant, so even the boring parts weren’t bad.

I’m in awe that the author can write so beautifully in English, since Hebrew is her native language. (Funny, my last book was set in Israel too—an excellent novel called Holy Lands.) I look forward to Tsabari’s next book of short stories or other fiction. Final word: Not enough people know about this great writer. Check her out!

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+ stars

I read and really liked Ayelet Tsabari’s book of short stories, The Best Place on Earth. Her memoir, The Art of Leaving, is almost a companion to her book of short stories – she covers many of the same places and I recognize the sensibilities and experiences of her main characters. Although she is only in her 40s, Tsabari has had an interesting life and her writing is expressive and engaging. Tsabari was born in Israel to parents of Yemeni origin. Her father died when she was 10 years old. Her grandmother had been abandoned by her own mother when she was 2 years old. Until recently, Tsabari has led an unconventional life, traveling the world, strongly attached to her family and people but often looking to leave and looking to move on. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of her life – her father’s death, her military service, her travels to India, time spent in New York, returning to Israel to learn more about her family, becoming a mother, etc… As she writes, she slowly discovers where she comes from and what motivates her. This is a rich memoir with lots of food for thought. I’m definitely looking forward to her next book. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This is a thoughtful and well-written memoir of an Israeli woman, about her childhood, her globetrotting young adulthood, and later settling down in Canada. I was so excited to read it that I overlooked key information—namely, that it’s a memoir in essays, several previously published in slightly altered form, which always feels slightly disjointed compared to a book composed as a cohesive narrative.

And I enjoyed the segments about the author’s childhood, family and home country much more than the middle chapters about her global wanderings, in which she documents her experiences traveling broke, doing drugs, and having many short-lived relationships. It feels odd to criticize a memoir for this because these years happened and form a crucial part of her life story, but these sections also felt less insightful and meaningful to me.

That said, I loved the chapters at the beginning and end. Tsabari writes insightfully about growing up in a large family of Yemeni origin, about losing her beloved father at a young age, about discrimination against Mizrahi Jews in Israel, about uncovering the hidden history of her great-grandmother from Yemen. There’s a fascinating chapter about her time in the Israeli Defense Forces, in which she acts out and has problems with authority, and now examines the reasons why. There’s a great chapter toward the end about her experience of being assaulted on a bus, her patchy memory of the event, and her resulting trauma. The later segments about her relationship to her family and its history upon becoming a mother herself are also interesting.

Overall, while this one dragged a bit for me in the middle, when I liked it I thought it was fantastic, and it’s certainly well-written. I remain interested in picking up the author’s short story collection, which is reputed to be better.

[Cindy H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for gifting me with this remarkable memoir. In exchange for the ARC I offer my unbiased review.

Without a doubt I will be purchasing a physical copy of this stunning memoir so I can share it with friends and family. This collection of essays resonated with me on so many personal levels; daughter, mother, expat, Jew. I highlighted so many passages and shed too many tears. Although Ayelet Tsabari and I grew up oceans apart and lived very different lifestyles, I found such a strong familiarity within the pages of her story. Her vivid writing & brilliant sense for sights, sounds, smells, streets and neighborhoods kept me devouring the pages and acknowledging the truth of her experiences.

“Home is collecting stories, writing them down, and retelling them.”

“I remind myself we get to keep our memories and stories, take them with us wherever we go.”

Israel is not some foreign land to me, but a place I consider a second home. And I recognize the scars, thorns and messy implications that carries and I applaud Ayelet Tsabari for presenting her homeland in an honest light.

“Our country is haunted by its dead, weighted down by loss and remembrance.”

I hope this book will resonate with all readers the way it did for me.

[Holly R W · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Art of Leaving" is a book that works on many different levels. It is the author's reflections on her own life, thus far (into her 40's). She writes about growing up in Israel as a Jewish Yemeni. Her life includes having 5 siblings, losing her father at age ten, serving in the Israeli army at 18 and then living several years abroad. The reader comes to know Ayelet as a stubborn, argumentative and independent-minded young woman who has a difficult time with commitment. During her 20's and mid 30's, questions of self-identity loom large as Ayelet experiments with her sexuality, ethnicity and lifestyle. She is always restless and has perfected "the art of leaving". Unlike many of her friends, she has no interest in establishing a home and roots.

Throughout Ayelet's travels and drifting, she always manages to come back to her mother and family in Israel. They may question her choices and not always understand her, but their love for her is a given. As Ayelet gets older, she learns to appreciate her mother more (and fight with her less). Learning to cook her mother's recipes was one of the more delightful chapters for me to read. With time and growing maturity, Ayelet does find stability in her life and is able to settle down. She does this in a way that is genuinely her own.

The author writes in English, which is a second language for her. The words and images she uses are beautiful. Her metaphors fit naturally into her writing. They are utterly original and creative. I have featured some quotes from the book at the bottom of my review, so that others can have a taste of her writing. This is a book and author I will not forget. I look forward to future books by her.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4; weak opening, but it gets better, though her non-fiction prose is not as well crafted as her fiction. Recommended to readers who lost a parent at a tender age, current or former vagabonds, and people who became parents for the first time in middle age.

[sorrowmancer · Rating 2 out of 5]

the first page in this book -- a book by a mizrahi jewish woman born in israel -- to mention "palestine," or to mention anyone or anything "palestinian," is page 137. it appears, i want to say, a single-digit amount of times overall. i get it -- like, lots of US books written by whites and lauded as high literature in the 19th and 20th century have similarly scant depictions of black people, i get it. but there was also, after all, literature by white people from that period where black people figured prominently!
this memoir wants you to believe that its author's understanding of oppression & marginalization was not influenced in any significant way by israel's occupation of palestine. she talks about social justice a lot! if this is the case because the book wouldn't sell otherwise, great: the author has written a cool, fun, morally bankrupt book. this is marginally better than the alternative, in my estimation -- that the author, despite frequent allusions to sympathy toward movements for social justice, genuinely could not give two shits about even pretending to conjure up purely-on-paper solidarity with palestinians, to the point of not even learning anything that might have helped clarify her own position in the israeli social hierarchy. this particular flaw has overshadowed any specific positive aspects of the book i might have remembered & put here

[Mindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is so much about this book that I like---the stories of her Yemenite Jewish ancestors, her feelings of not belonging, her childhood memories---and then there are the parts which almost made me put down the book in the middle, the obsession with her drugged-up '20's and the need to tell us about every person she ever slept with on her journeys in India, Thailand, etc.; her misbehavior in the Israeli army, the general narcissism of a writer who is always writing about herself. But in some ways she's a fascinating writer, and yet I don't really come to like her (why should she care? I still bought and read the book!). I think her current "partner" (husband) must have asked her not to write too much about him, because she writes in very little detail about him, unlike the oversharing about all her previous boyfriends. There are certain people to whom I'd recommend the book, but not generally. If you want to know about Yemenite Jews in Israel, about a young woman who loses her father at such a young age and never really recovers from that tragic event, a person always "in exile", then read Ayelet Tsabari. In certain ways, the book reminds me of Adichie's AMERICANAH (sp?), which was beloved by so many, but which I found annoying in many ways.

[OK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good memoir-essays, clean and polished prose, clear images. I learned a lot about Jewish-Yemeni & Mizrahi identity and culture, and appreciated learning about Ashkenormativity through Tsabari’s eyes. Her meditations on motherhood were moving, and the memoir ends with a strong sense of resolution. The descriptions of food and place were lovely.

I needed more, especially around geopolitical critiques of Israel and Tsabari’s travel to the global south. Questions of land, nation, and exploitation—and the ways in which the author is situated in these matrices of power—were glaringly absent. I could sense certain moments of willful circumnavigation around these thorny issues, especially re: Palestine.

3/5

As I grow up, I will try to live as wildly and loudly as I can to outdo the enormity of this moment, to diminish it. - 21

Two and a half years in this body and already her attachment to it is so strong, for fear of losing her self so great. - 286

Perhaps motherhood is a series of small abandonment, in the same way that life is a series of goodbyes. - 310

[Mafi Zis Amețita Aka Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cărțile sunt de multe feluri, profunde, întortocheate, de stors emoție, de gândit, de îmbrățișat, de aruncat etc însă cartea asta e despre asumarea adevărului tău, despre sine, despre identitate și despre împăcare, e chiar o poveste de viata dar spusă atât de sincer, nu se simte nici măcar o secundă că dorește să cosmetizeze sau să înfrumusețeze ceva 😏

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ayelet Tsabari is an Israeli woman of Yemeni family, whose life was shaped by her ethnicity and by her beloved father's death when she was nine. She became untethered, unmoored, wandering the globe, searching for experiences that would help her define herself.
"The Art of Leaving" is the story of that search. It is raw, gutsy and honest. A very worthwhile story of how one woman found her place in the world.

I received this book free from Random House and Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.

[Aurina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was overall very engaging except towards the end where it felt a bit dragged out. My favourite chapters were about the author’s Yemeni identity, her family’s history and the treatment of Yemenis in Israel. These were beautifully and delicately written. I was less interested in her drug-fuelled travels and romantic fails or even her eventual motherhood, but yes I know it’s a memoir so I don’t entirely begrudge that.

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful memoir. I felt a strong connection to the universal themes of belonging and family. I read this to give me inspiration in my own work and it didn’t let me down. The structure of the book was so unique. It read like short essays but they were chapters that connected in terms of theme not story line. It worked perfectly.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ran a little hot and cold with this memoir. Sometimes I found her annoying and self-serving. She is very open and honest and does change and comes full circle eventually.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the beginning and the end. The middle bit of "took a lot of drugs while being a 'carefree' traveller" I've heard 1000 versions of 2000 times.

[Diana Ardu · Rating 3 out of 5]

O carte care atinge multe subiecte, de la familie, adolescență, relația cu predecesorii, spiritul de aventură, teribilismul, erotismul, contextul politic din Israel, până la propria maternitate a naratoarei, toate trecute prin punctul nodal al ideii de identitate, în continuă redefinire. Plăcută ca stil, emoționantă și delicată pe alocuri, cartea lui Ayelet Tsabari este un dar asumat pe care îl face tuturor celor dragi, un dar născut din recunoștință și din dorința de a-l păstra /regăsi pe "ACASĂ".

[Olga]

I tried, I tried so hard to make it through this memoir. The writing is beautiful but there's no real sense of structure and at a certain point, it felt hard to navigate the lack of cohesiveness. While I really liked the narrator at certain parts, other times I found her aimlessness frustrating and without purpose. I wanted more of an exploration of her grief as it related to her father's death but at the time of her enrollment in the Israeli Defense Forces, her father had been dead for nearly nine years. It felt strange to use that as a plot point and then not spend much of the memoir discussing her father.

[C.S. Ennen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wonder how many great books i've missed out on because they have covers like this

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I try not to watch the news, not to read the papers, but "the situation"- the bland euphemism Israelis use for the conflict- is everywhere, a barbed wire wound through everyday life. Every decision you make...May be fatal. p169

Pretending not to care was exhausting; I was holding on to my facade so tight that my muscles ached. p221

More of a series of essays than a coherent memoir, this book marks the passage of a wild youth into the acceptance of motherhood. Scarred by the loss of her beloved father when she was barely 10 years old, confused and conflicted by the rules that assigned her Yeminite heritage a shameful status, Ayelet rebels in every way she can. After a lackluster mandatory army service, she takes off for a nomadic sort of existence, always with an eye out for home but usually leaving before that could be established.

Home was transient, constantly shifting. Home, essentially, was the act of leaving- not a physical place, but the pattern of walking away from it. p264

Curiously, our paths brushed several times. She spent years in Vancouver and mentions familiar events and places. She also mentions in passing the terrorist attack on the bus that killed my cousin. I know what it's like to feel doubly displaced.

Around my family, I can only be who I've always been: the angry, tantrum prone, over sensitive child who fought her way through adolescence. p87

That would be me, yet for all of her intimate reveals, AT retains an aloofness that mocks the idea of intimacy. I'm glad that she has found peace and joy in motherhood and I can't wait to try a couple of her recipes.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
quoting James Baldwin

[Jessica - How Jessica Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review coming for Shelf Awareness (who sent me the ARC).

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smart, insightful writing. I'd like to read more by this author and about her culture. The chapters are a collection of essays arranged roughly chronologically, their stories are not totally sequential and this threw me at first. I got a little impatient with her perpetually immature/unstable nature—so opposite mine—but it resolves. Ultimately worth the read.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ayelet Tsabari grew up poor and discriminated against in the Sha'ariya neighborhood outside Tel Aviv, with her Temeni (Yemini Jewish) family. She hated the army, and was a miserable soldier. She seems to have spent her twenties and early thirties in a peripatetic flight from every convention and responsibility. Such stories of young Israelis are legendary. If you know Israel you've heard many a tale of Israeli youth stoned in India, living on beaches in Thailand, wandering in South America, all seeking freedom following army service, all postponing their return to the confines of their anxious little country. She was one of them, and Tsabari renders their voice in expressing hers. This is the story of wandering, lost, rootless youth... and how one of them found her way home to her true self - the writer whom she always wanted to be, but had postponed becoming for so long.

The book is readable, engaging and relatable. It gives you a real feel for Israel in the 1980s when she was a child, and then brings it forward to the present. It gives you a feel for one of the mizrahi cultures, and what the world looked like from within that inside/outside position.

[Bahar Alipour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing storytelling, I found a lot of parallels to my own story of life, the search for sense of belonging and the concept of home (except for the wandering and drugs). Powerful story! Although at times, it put me out of my comfort zone but I managed to learn from it

[Tammi Stuhldreher · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate to say this about somebody's story, but I found this to be boring. A collection of essays that were arranged in almost chronological order, some were interesting, but it felt like stories from a self-centered person trying to justify their self absorbed life.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don't know how to rate this - i feel like it was a 3/3.5, but i originally put this at a 4. i didn't like the first half very much, and i'm not a huge fan of her writing style. i felt that some of the essays were a little repetitive. as someone who likes a linear storyline, or something that is easy to follow, it was confusing when she kept leaping around to different timelines, reintroducing the same people / time period in slightly different ways, it was sometimes difficult for me to grasp the context of each one. i also don't like redundancy, so it didn't feel like it was a cohesive memoir (vs a collection of essays), but maybe that was the point? to illustrate different pieces of memories and how they are assembled together bit by bit? and some themes just felt like they were hit on over and over again, even though they were different people, it almost all blurred into one (all the different men, etc) and no longer felt new very quickly. but some surprised me, like the one about her assault shocked me. the cultural and historical pieces were interesting and informative, especially as i just went to israel for the first time in january (and have israeli + arab friends) so i understood some (but not all) of this. i think many of the references would have been lost without this experience, which i really only had this year. she seems kind of similar to ariel levy, and the two books were actually a little similar - how they talked about freedom and motherhood at least.

[Tali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is about loss, grief, identity, pride, love, and finding yourself. There were many moments that made me so nostalgic. The writing style is gorgeous. Tsabari’s analogies, descriptions, and overall prose are lush and vivid. Her candor about the discrimination she faced as a Yemeni person in a world where European and Western standards are “optimal” resulting in her trying to wear different identities instead of embracing her own is honest and touching. Her journey to find herself and define what home is for her is interesting and unconventional. When she connects her family to her identity it’s magical. The blend of her late father’s poetry with her mother’s traditional cooking pay such homage to her roots. I salivated when she wrote about cooking. Her foundation and growth are unshakable. I loved her story and all the things in it that made me think of home.

[Baljit · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading her collection of short stories, I just had to read her memoir. Tsaberi writes of her childhood, the loss of her father in childhood, her friendships, her travels and her relationships. She is a Highly spirited character, forever on the move, outwardly happy but forever searching for fulfillment. She meets many interesting characters, she analyses her family heritage, confronting a culture often looked down upon, and in doing so learns to cherish her Yemeni ancestry.
On reading this memoir I can see clearly the link with her stories, many reflect personal experiences and capture the emotions of her characters , because there is a bit of herself in every character she writes about.

[Nadia L. Hohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my gosh. This audiobook was 11.24 hours of intense, beautiful, haunting, personal, and amazing reflection about Ayelet Tsabari’s life as narrated by the author. I attended a workshop given by Ayelet in 2016 (I believe) at the FOLD- festival of literary diversity- in Brampton. The Art of Leaving is the sort of impressive memoir I long to write. Raw, frustrating, loving, and tender, I identify with Tsabari’s drive to tell her story, find her family’s truths, and find herself and meaning. I can identify with her years of travels although mine only spanned months. I love hearing about how she became a mother and “more domestic”. I loved hearing about how much her writing means to her. I will be on the hunt now for more opportunities to learn from Ayelet. This book has made me want to read more about my own family histories as well. There are so many secrets which are complicated by migration and displacements, as Ayelet has also referred to. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this amazing work.

[Rose Kaur · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first and the last 15% of the book really connected with me - I found her experiences of early childhood in an immigrant family, the uncertainty of settling in a different country, and her fears of motherhood to be really touching - even mirroring a lot of my experiences too.

However, the majority of the book that deals with her drug abuse and fleeting relationships felt too meandering and painfully descriptive. It was frustrating to read someone come to really obvious realizations - that doing excessive drugs and living at the edge of life might not be the best way to deal with one’s fears and anxieties. I do see merit in sharing these experiences with others who might be in a similar place and find it hard to reach out for help - yet this wasn’t delivered in an insightful or impactful manner.

I did see glimpses of authenticity in her story, and this might be a shortcoming of my own - not being empathetic enough towards the narrator - but I couldn’t see beyond the irresponsible decisions and the lack of accountability that seemed to be glorified in her escapades. Although this was a story about struggles and self-identity, it also somehow seems to have come from a position of privilege.