Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a literary thriller that is set in Israel. Neurosurgeon Eitan Green has a good life, married to a beautiful police officer and the father of two young boys but one night as he is coming off a long night shift at the hospital, he drives out into the desert and as he is speeding along a moonlit road, he hits someone. This one deadly mistake could ruin his life, his family and his reputation so as he gazes down upon the dying man, he makes the decision to not report the accident. This decision brings Sirkit into his life. She is the dead man’s wife who blackmails him into providing medical care to other illegal African refugees.

The story advances and we share in Eitan’s moral crisis as his guilt and shame engulf him. To make matters worse, his wife has been assigned to the hit and run case, and although her supervisors aren’t particularly interested in whether she finds culprit who killed an illegal immigrant, she does want to find out who did it. Eitan also can’t explain the building relationship he is developing with Sirkit, on one hand he hates her for the power she has over him, but on the other, he is struggling with the building sexual tension that arises between them.

The story is excellently written but is very dense and the pacing is quite slow. Not only are we reading of Eitan and his dilemma but also of the prejudice that exists when dealing with refugees and illegal immigrants. It’s a grim story but one that probes the complexity of our moral choices. The book is beautifully translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston and is a remarkable novel that deals with morality, power and prejudice. ( )

A weird combination of literary fiction and thriller, Waking Lions focuses on a neurosurgeon, Eitan, who accidentally hits an African immigrant while joyriding in his SUV. This accident sets off a sequence of events and ever more complex lies that revolve around Eitan, the wife of the African immigrant (Sirkit) and Eitan's wife, who happens to be a police detective.

I liked the premise, but the behavior of these three people staggers from the morally reprehensible to the incredibly naive. While I'm not a reader that really needs to like the characters in a book in order to enjoy the book, I do feel I need to believe their actions . . .and in this case, I felt some of them strained credulity. Honestly, for each character, I found myself asking, "would I do that in their position?", and my answer was no, no, and definitely not. No amount of exposition of their various points of view felt persuasive to me. That's the problem with books that hinge on a secret; when it seems easier to tell the secret than go to the lengths that people do to hide the secret . . .that's a bit of an issue for the reader. The author is a screenwriter, and while I didn't realize that until after the fact, it completely makes sense. I can so see this book as a movie. It probably would be a better movie than a book.

Interestingly, if the book had seemed more like a "thriller" from the get-go, I probably would have been happier to suspend disbelief, but instead it really reads like literary fiction for the first three quarters . . .and I think that set my expectations for something more realistic.

All in all, a good read - - a creative premise, good writing, and an "A" for effort in character development. However, the plot didn't quite hang together for me in a way that seemed credible. Especially the sexual tension between Eitan and Sirkit, and the development of Sirkit as a character. I didn't quite understand the former, and in the latter case, it seems as though Sirkit acts out of character.





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I wish I could give this book six stars. ( )

After pulling the late shift at the hospital, rather than going home to bed right away, Eitan decides spontaneously to take a joyride along a rural desert track. Lost in his enjoyment and lost in thought, he's horrified when he collides with and fatally injures a man who turns out to be an Ethiopian refugee. Fearful for his reputation and livelihood he chooses to return home without contacting the police and just pretend the accident never occurred, but the woman who appears on his doorstep the following morning isn't about to let that happen.

First, the positive: the book is very well-written. I was consciously impressed every so often by and admired particular turns of phrase. Whether it's the original writing or the translation, from that perspective it was a joy to read. But, alas, the negative: the biggest issue I had with the story is that the pro(ant?)agonist was unlikeable to the point where I could no longer empathize with his predicament and actually hoped he'd get caught. Some aspects of the narrative seemed a bit far-fetched; I would think a hospital would be much more concerned about missing drugs, than Eitan's hospital appeared to be, and that source of supplies would have dried up pretty rapidly. I can't recall if I rolled my eyes or whether my jaw dropped (or both?) in chapter 8 when Eitan begins fantasizing about Sirkit's "perfect body" and "gorgeous breasts." Did I pick up a dimestore romance by mistake? The objectification came out of nowhere for this type of novel and was just kind of gross, considering the circumstances. ( )

I found the beginning of this book making me very uncomfortable. That was not because of the hit and run accident that began the book, but it was more about Dr. Eitan Green's forced relationship to a group of poor, black, and sickly Eritrean immigrants to Israel. Eitan was a successful, married neurosurgeon and father of two boys. The character who stood out the most was a sort of a mysterious Eritrean woman named Sirkit whom we learn more about as the story advances. Extreme inequality always makes me uncomfortable, but this book set this contemporary Israeli social problem directly in front of me.

Not only did I have to deal with a doctor facing a moral dilemma in a repugnant manner, but I also had to face his attraction to a woman with whom he should have had no contact as well as to deal with his uncompromising arrogance. I had to keep telling myself that this was only a story in order to continue reading it!

This book was ultimately about all about lies and race. So many despicable and poor choices were made by the characters! The book hit a turning point for me about 90% of the way through it, when I had to keep turning the pages to see what would happen. Know as you read this long, involved story, that all is not as it seems at first. Then come along for the ride as I ended up feeling that this was a pretty good novel after all!

There is a long paragraph within this novel which gives voice to the idea of trying not to feel superior to a group of “others” and yet knowing guilt just because of that feeling. It was a relief to me learning before reading this novel that the author has worked for the Israel civil rights movement. ( )