Husband and Wife: A Novel

by Zeruya Shalev, Dalya Bilu (Translator)

Overview

A rising star of international letters, Zeruya Shalev takes us on a compelling narrative journey in the exquisite and unsettling Husband and Wife. Na'ama and Udi Newman have many of the trappings of an idyllic shared existence. A couple since they were schoolchildren, they have grown together like vines and settled into a routine of calm domesticity, along with their young daughter, Noga. But in a scene worthy of Kafka, the quiet rhythms of their family life suddenly screech to a halt when Udi wakes up one morning to find that he is unable to move his legs. The doctors quickly set about searching for a physical explanation, but it soon becomes painfully clear that his paralysis is a symptom of something far less tangible, and far more insidious than any of them had imagined. This one morning sets in motion a series of events that reveals a vicious cycle of jealousy, paranoia, resentment, and accumulated injuries that now threaten to tear the small family apart. Shaleve brilliantly captures the vulnerability and deceptive comforts of lives intertwined in this deeply disturbing portrait of a diseased marriage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802140098
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/07/2003
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

Little occurs outside the racing mind of Na'ama Newman, the intensely thoughtful narrator of this second novel by Shalev (Love Life). Na'ama is a social worker who heals ailing young mothers and their children, though she is unable to turn an observant eye on the lives of her own husband and child, or herself. When her husband, Udi, a healthy hiking guide who periodically leaves the family for long, solitary jaunts into nature, wakes up one morning unable to move his legs, Na'ama begins an inner monologue, wrestling over whether to take him to the hospital, where she will surely have to share him and the blame for whatever ails him with nurses, doctors and the rest of the world, or whether to keep him at home, where she and their nine-year-old daughter Noga can finally have a constant relationship with him. As Udi lies in bed, Na'ama's thoughts crash against each other: she recalls a brief though damaging affair, the perfection of her and Udi's adolescent love, and the ways Noga has borne the brunt of their sour marriage. When Na'ama learns Udi is suffering from conversive paralysis, a sickness in which mental stress is expressed physically, she is wildly jealous of the illness, saying, "so that's what she's called, his new woman, conversion." Shalev, an Israeli literary editor, has created a novel entirely devoid of standard dialogue, choosing instead to convey snatches of conversation, arguments and whispers of love in stream-of-consciousness prose. Her language is hauntingly, painfully lyrical, and her understanding of the conflicted human yearning for connection and solitude astounds. (Aug.) Forecast: Love Life, Shalev's first novel, has been published in 11 languages and was a number one bestseller in Israel. With this beautifully written and packaged second effort, Shalev may gain a wider readership in the U.S. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Friends since childhood, Na'ama and Udi Newman married young and start having marital problems in midlife. Setting the downward spiral in motion is Na'ama, who meets a young artist at the local caf and agrees to sit for a portrait. This turns into posing nude for him, and there is a hint of sexual dalliance. These issues come to a head when Udi wakes up one morning and can no longer feel his legs. After a thorough examination in the emergency room, doctors conclude that there is nothing medically wrong with him. Na'ama then learns about a young woman, Zohara, who practices Tibetan healing rituals, and contacts her to try to help her husband. In addition to these problems, Na'ama's ten-year-old daughter, Noga, struggles to fit in at school. Adding to this maelstrom, Na'ama has become emotionally involved with one of her charges at the hostel for unwed pregnant girls where she works. Written in a first-person, stream-of-consciousness style, this novel attempts to show what happens to a family when a 20-year relationship falls apart. Noted for her debut novel, Love Life, Israeli native Shalev plays confidently with the themes of jealousy, accumulated grievances, and resentments but, unfortunately, cannot infuse her characters with life. Only for larger collections with an interest in contemporary Hebrew fiction. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Israeli poet and novelist Shalev (Love Life, 2000) returns with a highly polished and deeply metaphoric account of a troubled marriage. Somewhat in the tradition of Gregor Samsa, protagonist Udi wakes up in Jerusalem one morning to find that he has a big problem-he can't move. Udi's wife Naama and his daughter Noga try to rouse him, but he remains paralyzed. At the hospital, however, all of Udi's doctors and all of the doctors' tests agree: There is nothing wrong with him. So they send him to the psychiatrists, who find themselves equally at a loss. Naama takes Udi home and discovers that he's capable of arousal, so (like Lot's daughter) she gets him drunk on wine and makes love to him in his sleep. This highlights what turns out to be a very significant aspect of Udi's problem: He had become bored with the routines of his marriage and family life. The story, as narrated by Naama, becomes a kind of Proustian recollection of the marriage, which reached its high point in the happy months following Noga's birth but has declined steadily in the ten years since. Can those early days be recaptured? Naama, as valiant a wife as any in the Book of Proverbs, tries, taking Udi on vacation and bearing his bad temper with astonishing fortitude-but whatever it is that ails him, it goes very deep. A clue is offered by Zohara, an acupuncturist who tells Naama that she and Udi have been blessed, not cursed, with this malady, and that they should not be in a rush to see him recover. New Age drivel? Or simply a new way of looking at old problems? Maybe Milton knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the "happy fall" from Eden. Probably too ornate for some, but a beautifully written story that carriesgreat weights of meaning.

Kirkus Reviews