These are the stories of Yael, Lea, and Avishag, Israeli teens from a small village near the Lebanese border. The story begins near the end of their last year in high school and takes them through their years of military service. On the one hand this was fascinating and completely engrossing, a very quick intense read. In Boianjiu's telling, Israel's young people live lives that are steeped in every kind of horrific violence, from random checkpoint attacks, roving shooters, actual war casualties, to suicide and plain interpersonal cruelty. And she's very effective at demonstrating nuance and compassion for Israelis and Palestinians alike. But I have a problem with any novel that's so drenched in physical tragedy (I think of this as the Arundhati Roy syndrome: just one more rape, shooting, murder, whatever - then I'll have something truly dramatic, thinks the author.) In the case of Boianjiu, it's not that I think she's exaggerating anything. It's just that one novel can only handle so much blood before it becomes numbing and kind of dull.
Another problem is that while the novel has three main characters, with chapters told from alternating points of view, they seem to have only one voice. This makes the novel hard to follow, and hollows out the three characters. Boianjiu is definitely talented (I think this is her first novel) and I will be interested to see what she does next.
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