Orly Castel-Bloom

Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom

This short dystopian tale is written in a fearless, shocking and courageous language that, at first, can be off-putting. The author describes an Israel and a heroine beset with paranoia, chaos, disease and hopelessness. A doctor, trained in Katmandu, she travels her city and land searching for sense of family and security that is not possible in this horrid state of affairs. At one point, she adopts an infant and out of a misguided maternal instinct performs show more untold surgical and other medical interventions in a sick, misguided attempt to protect him from the world around them.

She meets a man called Gordon who claims “I’m the first Jew to work the land since the destruction of the Second temple” yet after being together for 9 months (symbolic) “history and folklore had taken him over completely. All the theories about Mother Earth and working the land were bullshit. He was sick of Dolly City, he wanted to try his luck in Mexico City”.

In the end one has to believe that the author's tale is a commentary on Israel and the complications it faces dealing with their Arab neighbors and their own internal political forces.

If one can get past the horror of its language it can be an engrossing experience that I will be thinking about for some time. This book is not for everyone. show less

4

5

Le sujet est assez original, et la dose d'humour appréciable. Mais le roman devient plutôt embrouillé au fil de l'histoire, l'auteur forçant le trait et enlevant beaucoup de crédibilité à ses personnages. Quant à la fin, l'auteur aurait-il manqué subitement d'imagination et laissé en plan son roman en espérant que le lecteur l'écrive pour lui ?