Volume 51, Number 3 · February 26, 2004
Tales of Two Cities
By Gabriele Annan
Bliss
by Ronit Matalon,translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
Metropolitan Books, 262 pp., $23.00
Someone to Run With
by David Grossman,translated from the Hebrew by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 343 pp., $24.00
Bliss tells the story of two thirty-five-year-old Israeli women called Sarah and Ofra, who live in Tel Aviv and have been best friends since they were eleven. Any fears that the book may be a familiar celebration of women's friendships are overcome by the depth and unexpectedness of its insights and the wit and bite of its prose, especially the dialogue, which is extremely well translated. Ofra is the first-person narrator. She worships Sarah, but also disapproves of her, as well as sometimes taking on the role of her minder. They quarrel quite often and stop seeing each other, and then Ofra misses Sarah almost unbearably: 'The foolish notion that I would be able to make do with myself paled next to the awful, nightmarish hunger [for Sarah's company].'
Review, 3386 words
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