Three Weeks in October

I was surprised at how good this novel is. Yael Dayan tells a story of the first three weeks during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. The two major parts of the work focus on a wife and husband, a couple with two children, the wife of whom volunteers during the war in a hospital burns unit- the husband who at the end of the war goes down to the Southern Front and is involved in the last fighting of the war in Suez City where he is wounded. The work is very good in describing Israeli attitudes and habits of thoughts during that time. It has a credible cast of characters including a mysterious figure one who is mortally wounded and eventually succumbs in the burns unit- and who in the second part of the work the 'husband' looks for in Suez City when he is already not there. The book also tells the story of the relation between the husband and wife- and of a love affair the wife had when unmarried in which her lover was killed in an earlier war. The book is written with real perceptiveness, with a strong understanding not only of Israel mentality but of the complexity of human life and its relations. One of the things which most struck me was the pervasive Israeli sense of the need to do one's duty to one's country, the sense that Israel was forced into wars it did not want. The picture of Israel and its people as presenting a certain kind of 'ein breira ' consensus is appealing. Again this is a very good novel, and still very insightful in explaining what the state of Israel is all about.