Benny Barbash

10-year-old Yotam relays the fate of his dysfunctional yet loving family through the recordings he makes on a tape recorder he gets from his father. This stream-of-consciousness story takes a few pages to get into since Yotam transcribes recorded conversations that he doesn't always himself understand - although the reader does - along with his own ponderings and tangents thrown in. It never ceases to be fascinating, though, even borderline addictive, since you can virtually feel every show more person's passion for the point they're making, whether it be right-wing politics or left, religion or secularism, love or hate. It's a tragic, funny, and sometimes frustrating roller-coaster ride which ultimately describes a microcosm of Israeli contemporary society with its numerous and inherently disparate views on life. show less

For those of us who loved reading 'Catcher in the Rye' here is a wonderful story delivered in the same vein: through the voice of a young, sensitive child, whose sentences run into each other with barely a stop, because he is not only the witness of the disintegration of his family, but is tested to the limit by it. This intense flow is cut off at the very end, because the protagonist finds himself at a loss of words at the last twist of the story. So will you.

His father, whom he adores show more despite his many vices, gives him a tape recorder, which the author uses as a literary device to capture the voice and breath patterns of the other characters.

I simply loved this story, and thought that the voice was profoundly authentic.

Five stars. show less

Laughs and tears in an ultimately heartbreaking story about a son's struggle for attention and understanding from his dysfunctional dad and all-too functional mum in modern day Israel - funny so that it hurts, too, but the ending is truly tragic.

Ein sicherlich gut gemeintes Buch, inhaltlich interessant, aber die viel zu langen und verschachtelten Sätze rauben einem die Lust am Lesen.
Wären die Sätze kürzer und prägnanter gewesen, aber das ist leider Konjunktiv !