Sacks is an extraordinarily gifted writer whose intelligence, compassion, and skill on both the sentence and tension level rise to meet her ambition. She keeps us constantly on edge.” — Washington Post on City of a Thousand Gates
“Intersecting lives in modern-day Israel and Palestine overlap in a tapestry of tales in this compelling, rich novel that delves into universal themes of homeland, freedom, and true security.” — GMA.com on City of a Thousand Gates
“Reads devastatingly true. . . . A novel that resists offering a false sense of hope in the face of conflict.” — New York Times Book Review on City of a Thousand Gates
“An American novel manages, for once, to get Israel right. . . . I loved it. By the end of the novel, I was emotionally exhausted but also deeply appreciative of the care and nuance on every page, and the plot’s purposeful irresolution.” — Los Angeles Times on City of a Thousand Gates
“A brilliantly rendered novel raises crucial questions about identity, justice, war, and belonging. . . . Sacks’ talent as a novelist who takes on thorny, multifaceted, unanswerable questions is clearly unmatched.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The heroine of Sacks’s poignant second novel (after City of a Thousand Gates) revisits a summer romance with longing and the wisdom of hindsight. . . . Cultural differences and the age gap between the lovers . . . [impacts] the relationship, and Sacks renders it all in sensual prose . . . .” — Publishers Weekly
“A haunting portrait of a love affair against the backdrop of an Israeli incursion into Gaza. . . . The novel builds to a stunning and unexpected climax, with the horrors of the ongoing conflict bringing out very different reactions in the two leads. Nuanced and unsettling, Sacks' novel will resonate with readers long after they've turned the final page.” — Booklist (starred review)
"Sacks’ sophomore effort deftly imagines both the basic beauty of young love and the stunning complexity and emotional dissonance of life in Israel." — Elle
2023-05-24
The love affair between a Canadian grad student and an Israeli soldier grows increasingly complicated.
Sacks’ latest novel begins with a deceptively simple premise: A young woman falls passionately in love with an even younger man. Allison is a grad student visiting Israel from Canada; Eyal is on the verge of invading Gaza. She’s 27; he’s 19. At first, the story seems basic to the point of cliché. But Sacks quickly veers into territory much more troubling and complex. Just as Eyal is beginning to question the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza—and, by extension, his own—Allison is learning to silence her own questions. “I was finding that I liked myself better in Hebrew,” she tells us, “a language in which I had so much less to say.” Allison’s family, we learn, isn’t close—she and her sister have grown apart, and her parents are distant. In Israel, on the other hand, she finds herself fully embraced by both Eyal’s family and the country at large: “Nothing in my whole life had ever felt as good as being welcomed not just into a family but into a people,” she says. What’s most disturbing in this brilliantly rendered book is not the age difference between the lovers, not the war, but the way that Allison gradually learns to manipulate her own thoughts. “I could say to myself, ‘That was racist’; saying Death to Arabs is racist—but also,” she thinks, “I understood the feelings behind the words.” Desperate to belong, Allison engages in increasingly pliable mental gymnastics to justify her thoughts and actions. Sacks’ depiction of those mental gymnastics is astounding. Sometimes, it’s true, Sacks can be heavy-handed, repeating explicitly what is already implicitly clear. But this is a minor complaint. As a whole, the book—and Allison’s transformation—is deeply unsettling, and Sacks’ talent as a novelist who takes on thorny, multifaceted, unanswerable questions is clearly unmatched.
A brilliantly rendered novel raises crucial questions about identity, justice, war, and belonging.