Five Seasons

AB is a hit or miss author. A Late Divorce stands as one of my favorite books of all time. AB was pitch-perfect in capturing Israel & domestic life among the less-than-perfect family. Liberated Bride was AB at his worst: slow as molasses with a tangent everywhere. I couldn't get through it. Five Seasons is beautiful. Very little happens, but it doesn't matter. It takes a fine writer to portray a lazy Shabbat afternoon so simply and grief so utterly. There is little verbal poetry in AB; he prefers to explain, line by line, the making of a meal or a long drive to the North. But when he hits it--as he does here--you are in Israel & in the mind of one person as he gets through life. And that is poetry of a unique kind.