Ya'ara is a young woman who is caught between a loveless marriage and the beckoning sexual advances of Aryeh Even, an older man who is a friend of her father's. When Aryeh later tries to distance himself from Ya'ara, she becomes so obsessive about keeping him until a point is reached in the novel that the reader never knows exactly who is keeping whom.

This is a dark psychological study of a woman who is trying to understand herself, the two men in her life, and her parents. Written very densely in long paragraphs with no quotation marks, the prose looked as if it would be hard to read. It didn't turn out to be that way. I realized that the way the story was written never bothered me at all because I was so captivated by how it was told - more than a little bit sexy, sort of scary, but, most of all, deeply sad.

I liked that this novel was different than most other stories of love, but I would have preferred a more definite ending. I'll live with the one I got, though, as I'm pretty sure I know what will happen next. ( )

ספר דוחה אבל מצוין. סיפור של פתולוגיה ואובססיה מינית מצד אחד משונה ורחוקה ומצד שני קרובה ומוכרת. עין חדה לפרטים הקטנים ול בון מו. ( )

Welcome to a whirlwind of thoughts, emotions, confusion, obsession, pain, and love. It does take some getting into because Ya'arah's stream-of-consciousness tale seems so rambling at first. However, her scattered mind is never confusing (it's evident that Zeruya Shalev is also a poet), and it is soon clear that the frantic pace at which she tells her tale is a reflection of the frantic pace in her emotional and physical life.

It would be easy to dismiss Ya'arah as just an immoral woman who cheats on her husband, but at the root is her parents' relationship, her infant brother's death, her unsuccessful marriage (indeed a poor copy of her parents' unhappy marriage), and all the secrets that surround her. Her parents are a mystery to her and when Aryeh shows up with his intimate link to both of them (the details of which he is very reluctant to reveal), Ya'arah is immediately fascinated and her obsession starts.

This is very much a psychological novel, but there are also huge amounts of religious and literary references that could keep a scholar busy for a long time. Indeed, I was wishing I was back at University when I read it, because I could think of so many topics to write on. ( )