The lover [Hardcover]

The teacher is ferociously efficient. She cooks batches of food for the family, she corrects papers, writes tests, is enrolled in a doctorate program, attends teachers' meetings, cleans the house aggressively. As children in school her husband got answers from children who got answers from her. This Israeli novel is an outstanding work. Each character tells the story in third or first person narrative and things move along, although there is some time shifting, some use of flashback to bring in the back story and to make things interesting. The author uses considerable parallelism. For instance, there are three lovers in the end, not just the one of the title, the trigger of action, Gabriel.

Adam's garage was flourishing. It had become a rather large business, mostly through the efforts of his business partner. At one time it had some thirty Arab workmen employed there. Asya, the teacher, learned to drive a car at her husband's behest. The couple has a son. He is healthy, but deaf. He uses a hearing aid and because he is bothered by noises in his head, his father crafts a switch-off feature. Unfortunately he has used the feature when he crosses a street to join a friend at play and is hit by a car. The child, age five, dies. Later on the couple has a daughter, Dafna. When Adam sat shiva for his son Yigal he did not shave his beard. When Dafi is small she is fascinated with his beard. Notwithstanding her advent, Adam feels immensely sad. He believes that the couple should have divorced at that point, but they continued together, although estranged.

An old Morris car is brought by Gabriel into Adam's garage. The engine is rusted and spiders surround it. Gabriel has come from France to see his old grandmother. The car belongs to his grandmother. The car is fixed and the bill is beyond the means of Gabriel to pay. In fact he is starving. Adam assists him to get a job. Gabriel's close connection to Asya is discovered by Dafi. It is two months after the war and no Gabriel Arditi has surfaced. Na'im is one of the Arab workers in the garage. He is sent to Adam's house on an errand. Later he goes there on his own. His brother is a terrorist who planted a bomb at the university, but Na'im claims that the person is only a distant cousin.

Adam ends up hiring Na'im to help look for Gabriel. Also, Na'im stays with Gabriel's grandmother. In the course of the night time journeys a towing service is started. The condition of the people involved in the accidents requiring the towing of the vehicles begins to haunt Adam. Adam senses he has a compulsion to look for a man who has disappeared. Adam falls in love with a friend of Dafi. Na'im and Dafi become involved with each other. Gabriel has traveled to the desert to the front and then is taken in by some religious Jews.

The novel is rich and colorful. It is written in a realistic, psychologically astute manner.