Shira Lerner occupies a world of domestic tasks and school lunches until a university envelope arrives addressed to her former self, functioning as a psychological pickaxe.
During her commute, the city of Netanya undergoes a total cognitive evaporation, leaving only sand where concrete should exist. This mental blind spot sends her car into a guardrail, proving that while the city remains for the police, Shira has hit a wall in her own perception.
She seeks out Micha, a relic from her student years, to confront the fallout of a clandestine experiment involving Professor Seltzer and their late friend Amir. This academic inquiry into memory was an ethical car wreck, and Shira now finds her reality thinning as the professor's old mental anchors begin to drag her under.
The investigation into their stolen past triggers a domestic storm with Micha's wife, Naama, who views this sudden reunion with suspicion. Shira and Micha sift through old files, discovering that their very identities were traded away in Seltzer's lab, leaving their current lives built on a foundation of manufactured amnesia.
The Israeli landscape provides a specific stage for this erasure, as the mundane coastal plain conceals a predator of the mind. Ordinary items like Dogli pet food, Matti Caspi songs, and military charity receipts serve as the only ballast in a world where geographic landmarks and personal histories can be deleted by a post-hypnotic trigger.
The title (Crocodile at the Coastal Plain) suggests a lurking danger submerged beneath the flat, predictable surface of everyday life. This mental crocodile waits in the shallows of Shira's consciousness, ready to snap at the tether connecting her to the physical world. Or is the crocodile just hiding in plain sight?
Authority figures act as editors of the soul, proving that the sense of self is a fragile construction easily dismantled by those with the keys to the archive. Shira navigates a landscape where the cost of clarity is the total disappearance of her curated existence. Every recovered memory serves as a shovel, digging a hole where her comfortable, modern life used to stand.
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ספר מוזר שמסריו קצת עמומים, אך עם זאת כתוב היטב ומכיל מספיק עוגנים בכדי לייצב ולמסד את הסיפור מהתפזרות בערפילים. לא ממש קניתי את הקונספירציה של ההיפנוט. לחם שעשועים ואופיום להמונים כבר נכתבו ביד אמן ונחקקו בהיסטוריה ולא ממש צריכים עוד וריאציה על הנושא. הספר מהנה, הנסיון למקוריות אכן מכובד ואין כאן שום דבר מעיק או מתסכל. הנאה צרופה שלא ממש פותחת צ'אקרות. אם יש לי ביקורת היא משולחת בתיאורי הסקס המפתיעים שבאים משום מקום ונשארים שם ללא שום סיבה. חמוד, חביב, מומלץ לחוף הים, לטיסה קצרה, או לאחר צהריים אביבי.