The New York Times Book Review - Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Reading these striking stories, one wonders about the Israelis who lock their doors against external evil, but never stop to question their own morality…[Three Floors Up] and its conflicted apartment dwellers stayed with me long after I finished reading. "You can never tell what goes on with people behind their reinforced metal doors," says Arnon, the father on the first floor. Freud argues that you can't even tell what's going on behind your own locked door, or inside your own head. Freud's name is spoken, in a rare explanatory line. But luckily, for the most part, the story speaks for itself. The characters whisper confessions to us; we decide whether to judge or to forgive their sins—which are, of course, variations of our own.
Publishers Weekly
08/14/2017
Israeli bestseller Nevo (Neuland) returns with a transporting novel about the furtive lives of three tenants in a suburban Tel Aviv apartment building. On the first floor, Arnon attempts to turn the teenage granddaughter of his senile neighbor into a “potential mole” who will discover if the man has molested Arnon’s daughter. The tables are turned when Arnon’s advances are misconstrued, throwing his marriage into jeopardy. On the next floor up, a housewife named Hani, against her absentee husband’s wishes, hides her brother-in-law Eviatar from the loan sharks who are pursuing him. “I don’t have the strength to fake the happiness that is no longer inside me,” Hani writes to a friend, though she admits that something in the way Eviatar “acted with my kids made me feel desire again.” Above her, a retired judge, Devora, dictates messages to her deceased husband about a former Mossad agent intent on reuniting her with an estranged son. Nevo’s narrators range from despicable to endearing, and he handles each with a sure hand, resulting in a multifaceted narrative that is easy to be carried away by. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST
“Mesmerizing…this book and its conflicted apartment dwellers stayed with me long after I finished reading.” —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“Smart and absorbing…Nevo shows us life’s complexities in a thoroughly satisfying read.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL, *STARRED REVIEW*
“Eshkol Nevo, in his astoundingly moving new book, Three Floors Up, brilliantly captures how the landscape of a marriage can become tenuous and dark while parents struggle with children who seem to need a little extra help. His three loosely interwoven stories take place in an upper-middle-class apartment building in Tel Aviv where neighbors observe one another quietly, grappling with their own growing desperation.” —JERUSALEM POST
"Nevo (Neuland, 2014, etc.) is a bestselling Israeli author, and his most recent book to be translated into English makes it easy to understand why. His writing is compelling...[he] is a funny, engaging writer." —KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Israeli bestseller Nevo (Neuland) returns with a transporting novel about the furtive lives of three tenants in a suburban Tel Aviv apartment building…Nevo’s narrators range from despicable to endearing, and he handles each with a sure hand, resulting in a multifaceted narrative that is easy to be carried away by.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Best-selling Israeli novelist Nevo, his Hebrew fluidly translated by Sondra Silverston, cleverly infuses these quotidian albeit schadenfreude-inducing dramas with numerology (“everything is in threes”), Freudian analysis (the “three floors up” of id, ego, superego), the power of secrets (plus the greater threat of revenge), and the literary necessity for confessions (“if there is no one to listen–there is no story”).” —BOOKLIST
“The novella-length chapters offer a compelling critique of Israeli society. But Nevo’s chief strength lies in his ability to fashion wonderfully relatable characters whose troubled voices, as well as mysterious and impulsive moods, render the work a page-turner…Nevo’s talent for embedding telling character traits and cultural anecdotes through quick one-liners is perhaps his greatest asset. The prose sings in places, and Three Floors Up is difficult to put down.” —JEWISH NEWS SERVICE
"Israeli author Eshkol Nevo’s novel explores the social and cultural fabric of Israel through three tenants on three separate floors of an apartment building in Tel Aviv. Their individual stories and struggles are braided together with tight, terse prose, forming a cohesive picture of the broader society in which they reside." —WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
“A brilliant novelist, Eshkol Nevo vividly depicts the grinding effects of social and political ills played out in the psyche of these flawed, compelling characters, often in unexpected and explosive ways.” —BOOKREPORTER
“Lively, tripartite novel by Eshkol Nevo, a highly admired Israeli author…Nevo creates three compulsive narrators, three unsparingly candid monologues, three stories that expose the psyches of people caught at critical points in their lives…Perceptive and compelling, Three Floors Up plays with the form of the novel itself and keeps the reader absorbed in its sets of triads.” —JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL
“Three Floors Up by Israeli novelist Eshkol Nevo offers an intriguing and layered view into life in Tel Aviv. The novel centers on three families living on separate floors of an apartment building on the outskirts of the city. Through the lives and interwoven stories of the three families, Nevo presents a broad and complex portrait of Israeli society.” —SIGNATURE READS
“A brilliant novelist, Eshkol Nevo vividly depicts the grinding effects of social and political ills played out in the psyche of these flawed, compelling characters, often in unexpected and explosive ways.” —JEWISH REVIEW MEDIA
"Eshkol Nevo is a fascinating story teller who gives the reader a broad and diverse picture of Israeli society.” —Amos Oz, internationally bestselling author of A Tale of Love and Darkness
“Recognizable characters and situations make Eshkol Nevo’s newest novel, Three Floors Up, an economical yet masterful invention of three households in a suburban Tel Aviv building...Written simply but imaginatively, translated fluidly by Sondra Silverston, each story is an evening’s reading because you won’t want to stop.” —AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD
“Eshkol Nevo is a brilliant literary chemist who succeeds in extracting from daily life’s most mundane events, the deepest crystallized essence of the contemporary Israeli psyche.” —Etgar Keret
“Eshkol Nevo writes beautifully, funnily, and wisely about men and women…Friendship, envy, love, misery, endurance—he captures the lot.” —Roddy Doyle
"This is a thought-provoking book, but it remains very accessible and fun to read. Although each section can be read independently, it is anything but a loose collection of stories. There is a uniform atmosphere of mystery and foreboding, with a barely concealed threat of violence. Readers will need to read the novel in its entirety to fully appreciate the gradual build-up of unease, while the ending provides a solution for some, but not for all." —NECESSARY FICTION
"...gripping. Pain, lust, loneliness, nostalgia, bitterness, and maternal love are all locked in an intricately choreographed dance in this wonderful collection of interwoven stories.” —KVELLER
“The novels of Eshkol Nevo, son of ex Israeli PM Levi Eshkol, rise above simple storytelling—-his creative approach is multi-dimensional, his narrative multi-layered and his characters are always colourful and memorable.” —THE SWANSEA BAY
Library Journal
★ 09/01/2017
What do former Israeli officer Arnon, off-kilter mother-of-two Hani, and newly retired judge Devora Edelman have in common? They all live in the same upscale Tel Aviv apartment building, and though their lives barely touch, their stories do, as best-selling Israeli author Nevo (Neuland) explores issues of personal and parental responsibility in a smart and absorbing read. On the first floor, Arnon and wife Ayelet have been depending on elderly neighbors Herman and Ruth to babysit for older daughter Ofri, but Arnon begins suspecting Herman of abusing Ofri sexually, and his obsessiveness drives away his wife and ends up putting Herman in the hospital. On the second floor, Hani writes somewhat hysterically to a friend, chronicling her marital difficulties and explaining why she let her on-the-run brother-in-law into her house and finally her bed when her workaholic husband was away. On the third floor, Devora speaks to her dead husband, explaining how she became involved in student protests and was eventually reintroduced to their long-estranged son. Was Herman really guilty? Are Hani's accusations about her husband reasonable? What really caused the break between the Edelmans and their son? VERDICT Nevo shows us life's complexities in a thoroughly satisfying read.
Kirkus Reviews
2017-07-17
Three residents of an Israeli apartment building narrate their worries and woes.Nevo (Neuland, 2014, etc.) is a bestselling Israeli author, and his most recent book to be translated into English makes it easy to understand why. His writing is compelling—actually, it's compulsively readable, as the cliché goes. This novel takes place in a suburb outside Tel Aviv, an area one character labels "bourgeoisville." It is split along three narrative lines, each corresponding to a character who lives on one of three floors in the same apartment building. On the first floor, there is Arnon, a father who grows obsessed by the idea that his young daughter may have been molested. On the second floor is Hani, a mother and a wife whose husband is always away on business. Devora, a retired judge, lives on the third floor; her husband has died, her son is estranged, and she must build a new life for herself. Nevo uses Devora to remind us, not so subtly, that these three characters match up rather neatly to Freud's model of consciousness: Nevo has given us the id, the ego, and the superego, all in one novel. Fine; but though we're drawn in by each of these characters and their various troubles and travails, in the end we're left wanting. Sure, the stories are engaging (Arnon, Hani, and Devora each speak directly to a different "you"), but the book as a whole doesn't satisfy. "Do you understand?" the characters say, again and again. "Can you understand?" Yes, of course, you'll want to respond; but so what? Nevo is a funny, engaging writer, but his new book settles for cleverness without reaching for something more genuinely moving.
