David Grossman: Choosing Life
It’s not often that I read a book that so overwhelms me that I have to rest a few days before writing the review. To the End of the Land by David Grossman is just such a book. What is this book about? It is about everything that matters in the world. It is about three friends who find each other during one war; lose themselves during another; and try to reconnect during a third, and in the reconnection, save at least one life. To the End of the Land is about war, identity, family, motherhood, friendship, faith (both secular and religious), passion, and love. Colm Toibin’s stirring review of this novel made me want to read it and now I implore everyone I know to buy, borrow, and lend out this marvelous novel. Toibin wrote at the end of his review, “This is one of those few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.” It is a book that will change the lives of the people who read it, and in changing lives, a difference is affected and the world can be changed. I am reminded again of that great bumper sticker, “Fight Evil. Read a Book.” I want to create a new one: “End War. Read a Book.”
Ora, an Israeli woman just over the age of fifty, sets out on a walk through the Galilee. Her husband Ilan has left her, and is now traveling through South America with their oldest son, Adam. Ora was supposed to make the hike with her younger son Ofer, to celebrate the end of his mandatory service with the IDF but at the last minute Ofer re-enlisted, to take part in an aggressive initiative against the Palestinians, “a kick-ass operation, three armored units together?.how could he sit at home or go hiking in the Galilee when all his guys would be there?”
Ora is terrified that Ofer will not make it through his 28-day re-enlistment alive and she leaves on her walk so that “the notifiers”, the ones who will come to tell her of his death in battle, cannot find her, cannot deliver their message, and thus Ofer cannot die: “She has no doubt that what she is about to do is right, that it is the right protest, and it delights her to roll that word over her tongue and bite into it: protest, my protest?.That’s it, it’s decided she’ll refuse. She will be the first notification-refusenik.” And in refusing notification, Ofer will be given a “deferment” from death.
She takes Avram along on her hike, the father of Ofer and a man who is still recovering from his own military service decades earlier, when he was captured by the Egyptian forces and tortured. Ora uses her time with Avram to recreate in words the life she has had as mother to her two boys and as wife to Ilan. She uses her stories as a sort of talisman against harm, a protection for her son Ofer. Her words conjure up the thousands of little moments that make up life, rendering the preciousness of family, and how as a mother, she felt both happiness and pain in the beauty of creating a family. Her stories are moving and genuine reflections on the relationships between siblings, husband and wife, and parents and children. Interspersed with the common but lovely moments of family life are those huge events that can change everything, the earthquake moments of fate and accident and horror that can crumble the foundations of love and trust, and yet are not enough to sever all the tendrils of tenderness, affection, care, and simple love that in the end are enough to keep the family structure standing.
It is those same small and big moments that go into the forging of any lasting connection. The bond between friends is as vital and intense as the one that exists within a family, and just as necessary to survival, and to happiness. And again, it is the little moments that build the bond, through sharing of intimacies and dreams and passion and struggle, and the huge moments that define tragedy. Enduring the tragedy depends upon the foundation built by an accumulation of the smaller moments of happiness. Life is random, as Ora understands: “She is one human crumb. Ofer is also one human crumb. She can’t slow his fall by even one second. And though she gave birth to him, though she is his mother and he came out of her body, now, at this moment, they are merely two specks floating, falling, through infinite, massive, empty space.” Against the randomness of tragedy, all we have is the resilience of our connections, our loves, and our loyalties. In remembering what we have shared with others, we secure our lives, and theirs, even in death.
Ora is reminded of death everywhere on the hike. There is incredible beauty (which Grossman describes so well and with a obvious love for the country of Israel, which exists alongside his frustration with the government’s policies) but there are also plaques posted throughout the countryside commemorating one young man, then another and another, and another, who died while fighting against Arab hostilities. The horror of never-ending war, paid for by young life, grows: I felt nauseous reading the inscribed words on the memorials, and as terrified as Ora is that the next child to die will be her own.
While writing this novel, Uri, David Grossman’s youngest son, was killed while serving in the IDF. The tank he was traveling in hit was by a rocket while trying to rescue soldiers from another tank. Grossman finished the writing of his novel, and was quoted in The New Yorker as saying “This book was such an act of choosing life.” I am stunned by his bravery, by his writing, and by his vision, of a world where peace is the only solution. And peace is the only protection against the notifiers at the door.
To the End of the Land was translated by Jessica Cohen.
