Note from the Blogger

These mini-reviews are intended to be short recommendations, not full blown literary reviews. Please feel free to add your own comments. -- Tim Drake

Sunday, July 26, 2015

The Hilltop (Hebrew 2013; English 2014) By Assaf Gavron

A common retort from those of us with brothers, while somewhat overstated, is “were it not for our last names, we’d have nothing in common at all.”  Brothers Gabi and Roni Kupper no longer share even that characteristic; Gabi having selected a new, Hebrew name when he moved to the “illegal” settlement of Ma’aleh Hermesh C. What they do share however is the experience of growing up in Israel, post-independence. They are the lead characters in Assaf Gavron's magnificent novel The Hilltop which I dare say will be a classic of Israeli literature.

It’s dangerous for an American gentile like me to posit vast generalities on the State of Israel, or on the Jewish people, so I will try not to do so. But it is important to clarify upfront for readers of this review that Israel is as diverse of a place as one will find on planet Earth. 

We know, or we think we know about the divides -- Likud, Labor, religious, secular, Hasidic, Tel Aviv vs everywhere else, the west bank, the Old City, the Mediterranean, Haifa, the desert, the kibbutz’s and the settlements -- but, we don’t. The genius of Gavron’s book is that he has taken “all of the above” and turned them into people, not factions, and by doing so has shown us their common denominator.

Gavron is not the first author to use brothers to provide different viewpoints on life, but he’s truly mastered the genre with this book. 

Roni and his younger brother Gabi grew up on a Kibbutz near the Golan Heights, raised by an Uncle after the death of their parents in a car accident. Though close as kids, they lead decidedly different parallel lives as adults. Gabi eventually retreats into his religion, and helps found a settlement; while Roni escapes to Tel Aviv, then New York. The book traces their separate lives, and their reunion at Ma’aleh Hermesh C.

There are numerous subplots to this book that are easily stand-alone novels. At one time each of the brothers lived in the U.S. – Gabi working for an Israel fundraising organization, and Roni as an active participant in the “Hummus Forum” (a social networking group of Israelis working on Wall Street). It is Roni’s riches to rags story during the 2008 financial meltdown that lands him on Gabi’s couch in a trailer at the settlement. There they rehash their lives, their relationships, while living through the current political drama of the settlements issue. 

The early chapter on the “status” of the settlement of Ma’aleh Hermesh C is one of the most instructive -- and sadly hysterically funny -- episodes in the book, written as a commentary on the country’s legendary and insane bureaucracy.

The brothers’ lives intersect with dozens of others to provide a panoramic insight to all things Israel. The only position the author takes is that all of them have a belief system that is both situational and personal. To quote a biblical passage used frequently in the book:“though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the death, I will fear no evil for Thou art always with me.” We are all walking through that valley; no one’s journey is the same, no one's journey is superior to any other.

I cannot complement Gavron’s writing enough, his wording, and the structure of the book are near perfect. He seamlessly mixes the philosophy of Rabbi Reb Nachman of Breslov, the rigors of child rearing, running a tavern in Tel Aviv called “Bar BaraBush” named after American First Lady Barbara Bush, the shenanigans of Wall Street, and an online world of avators called Revival: The Second Life (that is engaged in religious warfare, some petty, some catastrophic).

An example of Gavron’s prose:

They reached the entrance to the cave, one of several large caves in the side of the mountain that had served as hideouts for the Maccabees and Romans, for monks and bandits, for shepherds and commando unit fighters and Crusaders; also for foxes, and for porcupines, and for leopards and snakes – for any living creature that passed through that desert at some point in time.

Earlier this year I read an Assaf Gavron short story in a collection titled Tel Aviv Noir.  Loved it, and decided to take on The Hilltop.  I am glad I did, and highly recommend it to others.