The Liberated Bride is the first book by Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua which I have read. It is very…. mundane? (if that is right word) in the way it follows the everyday life of Yochanan Rivlin, a middle-aged Orientalist professor in Israel over a period of time in great, sometimes maybe even excessive detail and mostly retains a very matter-of-fact tone.
There are hints that there is more going on underneath the surface, mostly provided by descriptions of several art performances the protagonist visits which take on a tendency to become self-referential discourses on what the novel one is currently reading is (or may be) doing.

Unlike what appears to be a majority of Goodreads commentators I did not find the protagonist unlikable at all – certainly he has his foibles and weaknesses, is a bit of narcissist and egocentric and probably not nearly as clever as he thinks himself. But Rivlin is trying, and trying hard to be a good person, and I found his love for his wife and sons – as misguided as its expressions may sometimes turn out to be – to be genuine and quite often even genuinely touching. I would even go so far to say that its protagonist is probably the main appeal of the novel: Yehoshua does a great job at portraying someone very human who tries to do well by everyone but is struggling not just with his own all-too-human weaknesses but with attempting to make sense of the way today’s world is and has become what it is, especially the knotty and generally unhappy situation in the Middle East of which there (naturally) are many lengthy discussions inside this novel. In fact, there is in general quite a lot of incorporation of extraneous material here, some of it fictitious, some of it real (like discussions of Edward Said’s Orientalism or a visit of the protagonist and his wife to a Japanese film which turns out (to my great joy, as he is one of my favourite directors) Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life.) The Liberated Bride is a long novel, and even so it gives the impression of being crammed full and overfull with all kinds of stuff. This can get irritating during reading, and more then once I frowned at the page when it presented me with yet another barely related episode or totally unrelated narrative or poem.

In retrospect, however, I think that this is probably a deliberate strategy: The wealth of detail which populates the novel keeps it from becoming flat or even just one-dimensional, all the various narrative threads jostling for space turn what would otherwise be plain realism into something different, the constant shifting and oscillating results in creating a third dimension which itself oscillates unsteadily between a dream-like, sometime almost hallucinatory state and political allegory. The result is a very weird mix, a reading experience which I can only describe as “slippery” and which, while admittedly often discomforting, in the end I found quite fascinating. So while The Liberated Bride is worth reading just for its portrait of a man trying to make sense of our contemporary world and to lead, to quote Adorno’s famous phrase (which I am not even going to try to translate), “ein richtiges Leben im falschen,” the novel’s ambition clearly reaches beyond that and – leaving simple realism behind even as it continues to employ realistic techniques – unfolds into a panoramic view of at least the Middle East if not the global human condition at the end of the twentieth century.

Brilliant novel. ( )

I have to agree in some ways with labfs39's review. I'm not sure I saw the point of the book. I only finished it because it was given to me by someone whom I am currently head over heels about and I wanted to see what it said about her and our relationship. I saw it through to the end but have no answer to those questions.

I disliked the main character from very early in the book - he reminded me of some of the things I most dislike about myself. So I was irritated rather than interested in his progress (or lack of it) through the book. There was a sense of secrets to be uncovered and sexual longings that would unfold; so I expected something more interesting to happen. But it didn't. In the end I felt like I had spent many hours of my life sitting through an Israeli soap opera. It said little to me about the human condition. The elements about the nature of Orientalism and colliding with post-modern social theory could have been interesting, but were too thin. Only the discussion of Arab poetry raised this above the norm for me.

The translation and editing also concerned me a little.

For example, on page 229: "The soft autonomous Palestinian moon vanishes in nebulous folds". (Best read in context of course) As ever, one doesn't know how much of that is the original and how much the translation. But the first five words of that sentence are so well chosen they made me squirm in my seat, the last four read like a fourteen year old poet. and made me squirm with embarrassment. And the use of words such an "hence" In dialogue?

There are also a few clumsy edits. For example on page 417 Hagit refers to a previous encounter with the post-modernist, that didn't happen, at least not in the book. And there are instances where the same para reappears, but seemingly not deliberately (I'm sorry - I've lost the page refs there and can't be bothered to go back and find them)

So, on balance ... no. I wouldn't recommend it. ( )

Wanted: Editor for 568 p. book. Must like minute by minute personal accounts and family drama. Action seekers need not apply.

I wanted to enjoy this book, but after 300 pages, I realized that would not happen in this lifetime. It took another lifetime to finish the book. Besides desperately needing to be edited, the story meanders for 500 pages and then tries to make the plot come together in the last couple of chapters. I started off thinking that Yochanan Rivlin, the main character, was charming, but after reading about his every move (including urination), thought (even the drivel), and action (usually inane) for several hundred pages, I was ready to strangle him and make this a murder mystery.

Yochanan is obsessed. His son, Ofer, was abruptly divorced five years ago, and neither son nor daughter-in-law will divulge why. Yochanan cannot let it go, and despite injunctions from his wife, his daughter-in-law’s family, and his son, he continues picking at it. When not busily pestering people about the divorce, Yochanan hangs around his office at Haifa University, unable to finish the book he is working on, and refusing to buckle down and write a paper for his elderly mentor’s jubilee publication. Although incapable of finishing his own writing, he refuses to give a recalcitrant Arab student her degree until he knows the intimate details of her life, family, and loves.

Yehoshua can write a good line and is insightful into the day to day interactions between Arabs and Jews. What I couldn’t seem to find in this book was a point. It was a struggle to finish, and I’m not sure why I pushed on. My recommendation: don’t bother with this one. ( )

Yehoshua convinced us in his novel that Jews and Palestinians interact and live in a quasi-harmony in Israel. The complexities of that relationship is set forth in warm, charming prose, as if I were listening to a reading at Selcted Shorts, albeit 500 pages longer. ( )