A Tale of Love and Darkness

Makes you think. Interesting both as far as his describing of his family legend and world history. The way he describe his caracters is very different and allmost breathtaking. Even rather long, it is so worth reading.

This autobiographical retrospective about an interesting moment in time in the history of the Jewish people and the creation of their nation offered a unique perspective of a unique moment in time

Interviews with older relatives was helpful in appreciating the times leasing up to that moment.

The history of this particular author and his family life provided yet another level to the story.

Held my interest and enjoyed.

This was an amazing memoir, beautifully written by Amos Oz, who was born in Jerusalem in 1939, witnessing the birth of the nation of Israel, and living through joyous and tragic events in his own family and his new country. The relationship between young Amos and his intellectual, immigrant parents is a central theme of his story. Amos' struggle to find his own voice and identity, especially after his mother's suicide, is beautifully written.

Reading this book was a challenge but a challenger that I thoroughly enjoyed. The authors wealth of knowledge is mind boggling and I feel I learned a .lot more about Israel and its history than I knew before. The depth of the characters is amazing.

This beautiful gem is a wonderful memoir of life in Jerusalem in the early days of the modern state. As literature, it dazzles, and as history, it gives the reader a clear and powerful picture of how things were and what people went through at that time. Should be required reading for all who love Israel.

Wonderful writing. A unique, amazing and moving perspective on the Zionism, the creation of the state of Israel and the day to day life of these pioneers who came from all over the world to Israel to fulfill their dreams or just find an ideal.

One has to skip pages of unnecessary names,repetitive stories,quotes from his and other books and use of polish and yiddish. The only good part was the telling of Jerusalem under siege with the British siding the Arab nations.

Natalie Portman did a interview about directing and staring in the film version of this book which was intriguing. The book unfortunately is far from intriguing. It is excruciatingly painful to read. The book is 518 pages. I'm on page 185 and doubt I will be able to finish. So far the I have gotten through the family tree of names and relations which has been endless. Literally hundreds of sur names of Polish, Israeli and German misplaced Jews are mentioned throughout this book. It's repetitive and I hate to say it boring. I have no idea where the story is going but agree with the Darkness in the title. Too dark for me!

I got interested in this book after watching Natalie Portman’s movie. It is a movie I found out by accident, without knowing anything about it. The movie captivated me. I wanted to know more. This was a case of watch the movie and read the book.

I rewatched the movie after finished the book and enjoyed the movie and the book even more. It is Love and Darkness, as the title implies, and a multilayer of Humanism and History cobweb. It is Jewish “8 1/2” on steroids. “Love and Darkness” is as beautifully written as a book can be. So much that it is cruel. The darkness is not so much about his mother’s suicide, but the elegance of his storytelling. It is an aggression.

It is not a quick reading. It is intellectually stimulating. It requires attention. Sometimes it is monotonous, slow and beauty as a long Wagner aria. You need to give yourself in in order to get something out. Amos Oz gave a lot of himself to this book. While I was reading, I sensed that he somehow was with me, reading over my shoulder. He was pleased with my enjoyment and was proud of his work.

Stories; some of them funny, others sad, many with a distinctively air of a fairy tale, and all are quite vivid. The author brings the reader so successfully into the lives of the characters that readers are likely to be as myopic as young Amos at the age of 9 to 12. I, not Jewish, felt Jewish, or at least Jewish in the style of this segment of the population. I wanted to adopt young Amos, tell his father how much I appreciated his unending good mood and care for his family as well as save his mother from herself. Non-Israelite readers might be a bit hampered by references to people, events, and locations that are unfamiliar, but a few incursions into Wikipedia should address the problem. Having finished the book, I can now watch the movie.

An erudite autobiography where Oz pieces together the lives of those close to him;his parents, their friends and associates,various aunts and uncles and those who influenced his life. For many, they arrived in Palestine fleeing the poison of 1920-30's Europe; the determination to see the birth of the Hebrew state, the illusion that it will lead to a perfect peace and the reality of the need to fight to exist every day.
In some ways,'A Tale of Love' reminds of Stephan Zweig's 'The World of Yesterday'; the story of his parents life in Vilna and Rovno;the persecutions;the fighting for independence, the struggle to survive the first few years(and thereafter). But this is also a deeply personal voyage for Oz as well. Its also one that many people will be able to connect to, such is the universiality of growing up-Oz's initial blind support of his families politics, to a rebellion against in order to establish the individual to a gradual realisation that there is no absolute in right and wrong.
But it is his Mother's mental deteriation and suicide that haunts the book as it has haunted Oz. Often he begins to broach the subject, only to shy away from going any deeper and it takes the whole book for him to cover the event and try to make sense out of yet another of the senseless events of death and destruction that is the lot of the Jew. Having an idyllic life in Rovno and a love of life and learning, going eventually to Prague University, she saw everything wiped out, most brutally by fascism, but with no less zeal from Stalin's communists.Fleeing to Israel for that perfect peace that even independence and the winning of the first Arab wars couldn't ensure, coupled with the grind of everyday austerity, I feel she must have felt the futility of life.
Oz's accounts of his father are also deeply moving; his quirks and frustrated ambitions, the grief Oz-like all children-bring those closest to them, this really is a book that teaches, enlightens and hits a universal chord with anyone who reads it. A really magnificent book.

This classic memoir, which alternates between reproach and joviality but rises inexorably to a cry of pain, melds Oz's beautiful style with a keen eye for personalities and people's eccentric inconsistencies. One is left asking questions about many of the characters, first and foremost of course the mother and father that loom so large in Oz's life. The history is also superb, including a hilarious reminiscence about Oz's meeting with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion.

This memoir is a triumph on multiple levels. First, it is the story of a young man's growing up in a period of history fraught with tragedy and hope -- the time just after the Holocaust and before the State of Israel was founded and took root. Oz blends the personal and the political in a seamless manner. His account of his adolescent sexual fumblings and his eventual initiation into sexual activity by an older woman is both psychologically convincing and utterly hilarious. Second, this is the account of a new nation, Israel, struggling to be born and to forge its identity. Oz grew up as an acolyte of the political Zionist Right; it is remarkable that he moved decisively to the Left and remained there. He is a Zionist who feels deep and genuine empathy with the Arab populace. Third, many reviewers have not pointed out that this is a literary memoir. From almost the day that he learned to read, Oz devoured the classic and not-so-classic works of world literature -- whatever had been translated into Hebrew. In some ways, this book is Oz's effort to acknowledge his literary ancestors and repay his literary debts. The language is lyrical and the sense of history is pervasive. Altogether an outstanding book.

A moving, intense memoir of the life of this prolific Israel author, tells of life in the Land of Israel from the 1930s until the early 1950s. The author manages to juggle humor and sadness, in a book which does bring to life the Israel of that time. It is circular in nature and not chronological and dwells also on life in Europe for Jews before the re-establishment of the Jewish State. The two problems with the book are the amount of detail can become monotonous and boring and that Oz sometimes tries too hard to be iconoclastic and cynical, leading simply to a certain putridity. Though my own politics differs from Oz leftwing (yes still humane) political though and that may account for part of my irritation.
The author describes his grandmother's obsession that the Levant is filled with germs, and her immaculate obsession with cleanliness as a result. Oz describes his early childhood with a clear and penetrating memory and end in his mother's suicide at 38 in the early 1950s-with Oz describing her depression and his pain and psychological exploration of her suicide. He describes his intellectual but frustrated father and the stifling, book filled flat in Jerusalem from which he escapes to the animating Kibbutz Hulda at the age of 15. The author describes the situation of Israel in the last years of the British Mandate of Palestine, and provides interesting history of the birth of Israel. From the Holy Land during the Second world war, when the Jewish yishuv (community) of Israel feared the Holocaust coming to the Holy Land at a time when the Nazis looked like they had the Palestine mandate strangled by their control of the Caucuses in the north and their advance in North Africa on the other frontier. At this time Haifa and Tel Aviv, as the auhtor mentions were bombed by Italian planes. The gripping elation and fear at the vote in the Untied Nations at the end of 1947 in which the partition of Palestine was agreed to, the coming of the painful War of Independence and the shortages incurred therein, the atrocities of the war such as the burning alive by Arabs of 50 nurses and doctors on the road to Jerusalem and the killing of dozens of Jews in Jerusalem during a terrorist bombing by pro-Arab British Army deserters calling itself the British Fascist Army. The author describes his first sexual infatuation with a schoolteacher in her 30s named Zelda, and this too is described in immaculate detail. Overall a great contribution to Israeli literature and thought.

In "A Tale of Love and Darkness" the Israeli novelist and political essayist reflects on his childhood. Oz tells of a morning writing the book in Arad, he is working on chapter 36, and says: "I don't know what can contribute to the progress of the story, because as yet I have no idea where this story wants to go, ....". Certainly, Oz is trying to understand and come to terms with his childhood, but I think his primary motivation may be even simpler: to better recall his youth and the people who were important to him, for Oz makes clear he does not have an exceptional memory, and that sometimes, like an archaeologist, he is recreating a memory from fragments (and whatever help he can get from other first person accounts of the time).

What made reading this book such a memorable experience? Certainly, Oz is a talented writer. It is unlikely that someone who is not a novelist could write prose as well, or recreate conversations and scenes as well. Oz's childhood was eventful, and at least in his hands, his family life is interesting. Oz offers a feel for a time and place (lower middle class life in Jerusalem in the years 1939-1948) as well as fascinating stories about his ancestors, particularly on his mother's side. What really sets this book apart, however, is Oz's personality itself. You have to love and admire this man - and enjoy his sense of humor.

"A Tale of Love and Darkness" could have benefited from better editing. I would advise the reader to keep in mind that Oz was born in 1939, for the book can be imprecise about dating events, and some readers might wish to begin by looking at the family picture on p.509.

Others have written what this book is about, so I will not try to describe the content of this book. Like the way he presented his mother, Amos Oz is a born story teller and a great painter with words. There is not a place, a person or an activity but that he presents it in such detail that you can actually SEE them. But I must say that often I found the detail excessive. He seems to have total recall, which is often rewarding but can at other times be a bit of a bore. He tells you the number of steps leading up into a house; he describes the smallest objects in a room without asking himself whether they are truly necessary to establish the room's atmosphere; he is inordinately fond of lists. Here, for instance, is a sentence describing his mother working silently and efficiently in the house: "She cooked, baked, did the washing, put the shopping away, ironed, cleaned, tidied, washed the dishes, sliced vegetables, kneaded dough." His aunts, who tell him about the family's life in Poland, also seem to have had total recall: that life is richly reconstructed, but again for my taste the pudding is often over-egged. Then he describes in minute detail and several times exactly which streets he or his mother would take from one location in Jerusalem to another. That might possibly be evocative for Jerusalemites who know the city; but if they know the city, do they need such a guide? These tiresome excesses are most in evidence when he describes his earliest years, until he is about eight years old; but those chapters take up about 2/3rds of this massive book (though his tale is never entirely chronological). Then, when he is eight, the War of Independence happens (excellent description of Jerusalem under siege), to be followed by the establishment of the State of Israel, and now the narrative becomes rather more concentrated and with fewer of the mannerisms of the earlier part. There is a magnificent description how, at the age of 15, this pale, immensely precocious cerebral but romantic youth escapes from the stifling intellectual world represented by his father and his father's friends, to live among the bronzed young gods on a kibbutz. He will stay on that kibbutz for the next 31 years, but his story ends with his adolescent admiration of the goddess who will become his wife five or six years later. And that is where, chronologically, his story ends (though throughout the book there are brief references to events in his later life).

This is a totally inadequate account of the book, and does not even touch on the thread that runs throughout: his relationship with his parents and their relationship with each other. Despite the irritations I sometimes felt, I was never tempted to put the book aside: it is far too interesting and well-written for that.

"A Tale of Love and Darkness" is quite possibly my favorite book ever-- and I usually don't care much for the memoire genre. The language is gorgeous and deep as poetry. But the book is also sociological,and helps you understand what it was like to grow up in Israeli society in the wake of WWII. At the heart of the story is Oz's beautiful but tormented mother, who took her own life when he was still a child. This tragedy, and Oz's alienation from his father, drove him to join a kibbutz as a teenager. The story circles inexorably around the suicide and zeroes in on it only at the very end. The passage in which Oz dreams of saving his mother is one of the most resonant in all of literature, for me:

"I would certainly have tried my hardest to explain to her why she musn't. And if I did not succeed I would have done everything possible to stir her compassion, to make her take pity on her only child. I would have cried and I would have pleaded without any shame and I would have hugged her knees, I might even have pretended to faint or I might have hit and scratched myself till the blood flowed as I had seen her do in moments of dispair..." (p. 516)

I leave the rest to you. I wish I could read the original Hebrew. This book is a masterpiece. So beautiful, it hurts.

This 500+ page memoir by Israeli novelist Amos Oz is an absorbing "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The first 200 pages are about his mother's and fathers' families, Russian-speaking emigrants to Israel in the 1930s from Eastern Europe. An only child, he devotes much of the rest of the book to his parents and the years until his mother's death when he was still a teenager. It is a richly detailed book peopled with a Dickensian cast of characters. He allows readers to experience a total immersion in the daily life of a low-income Jerusalem neighborhood during the years leading up to and following the creation of Israel in 1948. It is a troubling story, capturing on the one hand the intensely felt emotions of being young, self-aware, and sensitive, while portraying also the humiliations and the least flattering of the author's personality and character, all played against the difficulties of his parents' lives and what seems to have been a disintegrating marriage.

Meanwhile, with its view of anti-semitic nationalism in Europe, readers can begin to understand something of the motivations driving zionist movements and the waves of Jewish settlement in Palestine before and after WWII. As Oz records the political discussions and obsessions of the friends of his parents, it's easier to understand the insularity and paranoia that led to the need for a homeland with defended borders and the eventual efforts to achieve military solutions to conflict with Palestinians and Arab neighbors. Though recognized today as a peace activist, Oz provides only hints of his evolution to a broader view, describing only his complete break with his past by leaving home for a kibbutz at the age of 15. As a companion memoir, readers will also be interested in "Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life," by Sari Nusseibeh.

The child of Ashkenazi Jews who escaped to Jerusalem just before the outbreak of World War II, Amos Klausner (the author's original name) grew up in a scholarly family which encouraged his precocity. His great uncle Joseph was Chair of Jewish History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote his magnum opus about Jesus of Nazareth. His father read sixteen or seventeen languages, wrote poetry, and had an enormous library, while his mother spoke four or five languages, could read seven or eight, and told elaborate stories.

Amos grew up a solitary child, encouraged to entertain himself while his parents worked. Always a writer at heart, he believed that "it was not enough for me to be intelligent, rational, good, sensitive, creative." He often felt he was a "one-child show...a non-stop performance," always on display to the relatives, his accomplishments never seeming to be enough.

In this elaborate, non-linear autobiography, Oz and his family are seen as archetypal immigrants to Jerusalem, people who arrived when the land was still under British rule and who helped create a new homeland, arguing ferociously about the direction the country should take and the leaders who should lead it. The history of Jerusalem combines with the author's own genealogical records and his memories about his early family life to create a broad picture of the society in which he grew up and in which his writing talent took root.

Detailed, highly descriptive, and filled with introspection about his unusual life, the book shows the tensions within the society and within his family. After his mother's suicide when he was twelve, he broke with his father, joined a kibbutz, and, at fifteen changed his name. His observations about himself in relation to his peers and in relation to the outside world, even at that young age, show his inner turmoil and determination to discover a personal identity.

As the book moves back and forth in time, the author comments about his writing, the people who influenced him, and his "pickpocketing," his "stealing" of the lives of real people in order to invent stories about them. His observations about Israel, its leaders, its never-ending wars with the Arabs, and his experience as a resident of a kibbutz for more than thirty years broaden the scope and provide insight into one man's life in this developing country. Obviously a huge achievement for Oz personally, this is also a huge contribution to the understanding of the growth of a Jewish homeland and to an understanding of how Oz became the writer he is. Much more detailed and leisurely than Oz's novels, this is slow but satisfying reading for those who admire his novels. Mary Whipple

This book is intelligent, witty, heartfelt, appealing, and troubling. The author touches on many simple things of everyday life that make his life story unique and have affected his writing. With his superb prose, he puts readers in his own situation thereby giving a sense of what it must have felt like to live the life of Amos Oz. There are precious reminiscences, my favorite being his parents and himself on the one phone line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv simply giving a weekly hello to relatives. He relates his deep shame at having inadvertently harmed a young Arab boy, what it was like to celebrate the night of Israel's Independence, his experience of being ushered out of an auditorium after laughing at Menachem Begin's use of the word "to arm", how in awe he felt in the presence of David Ben Gurion, how he became aware of his own political leanings, and the difficulty of carving out his own place in kibbutz life. He also opened his soul in revealing the anguish of his mother's illness and the pain of her death.

I love Oz's writing. It's very passionate, but often in an understated way. This is a truly special book. Enjoy it.

Oz calls himself a 'word child' from the earliest of times. His love of language and his ability to use it in such lyrical and striking terms, is what sets Oz apart from many good writers today. A Tale of Love and Darkness is a magical book, one which recount's Oz's story from the eyes of a child growing up in Palestine, when was a young child of 8 or 9 years old. Oz moves backwards and forwards telling his story, which appears to be non-fiction, (about his own life and that of Israel,)but could very well have elements of a beautiful fairy tale and fiction as he discusses what life was like growing up in Palestine and then Israel of from the late 1940s. In his early life, he dealt with the suicide of his mother, and its impact on his relationship with his father, himself and his country.

My only regret is that I could not read this amazing book in its original language of Hebrew. Being a lover of words myself, there are probably even deeper and more mystical layers of meaning in the original language of this great writer.

I decided to read this novel-like memoir after watching a program about it on Greek TV, and also after an American anti-Israel friend told me that he found a radio interview with the author "very moving". As other reviewers have pointed out, it's not easy reading, and the degree of detail can be tiring at times. But I am glad I read it, and I would heartily recommend it to others as a good introduction to Israel.

Why so many details? One answer is "because the author, being such a famous writer, could". Another answer is that this was the only way to portray and compare Jewish life before and after Israel. For example, the excruciating emphasis on his grandmother's obsession with 'Levantine germs and viruses' is suddenly followed by a telling episode that marked her arrival to Haifa: as a British doctor attempted to spray his grandfather with disinfectant, the author's father grabbed the spray and doused the doctor instead -- for Jewish honor "should no longer be trampled underfoot or disinfected"!

Another great 'surprise' is the way the author's tragic mother really 'enters' the memoir: right after his father is meticulously shown to receive the first copy of his book with unimaginable affection and liken it to a newborn baby, his mother dryly retorts "when it's time to change its nappy, I expect you'll call me".

Is the author's mother's suicide presented as a metaphor for the pains of Israel's birth? I would say yes, even if indirectly and unintentionally: her suicide took place in the same room that noted Israeli general and archeologist Yigael Yadin was renting during the War of Independence; less poetically, her death compelled the author to leave Jerusalem for a kibbutz, moving from the abstract Zionist ideals and debates to the reality of toiling on the Land of Israel.

Will this book be remembered as the saga of modern Israel? Perhaps, although the absence of Sephardic Jews and -- despite the author's 'accidental' visit to a wealthy Arab home -- Palestinian Arabs reduce its chances substantially. Still, if you read it Jerusalem will never be the same!

One last note: I read the excellent Greek translation of Yaakov Schiby and, comparing it to Nicholas de Lange's English translation, I am stunned to see that the latter has omitted one of the 63 sections (where the author writes about novels and writing) and generally altered the text here and there; as a glaring example, only 2 of 10 lines from Zelda Schneurson-Mishkovsky's -- author's second grade teacher in pre-Israel Jerusalem -- magnificent poem "In an Old School for the Blind" cited by the author (and the Greek translator) appear in the English translation:
"For the first time I am thinking
about a night when the constellations are only a rumour"...

[*12/20/07 EDIT*: I have good reasons by now to believe that the poem's author is not the teacher but the student (i.e., Amos Oz himself); in any case, here is how the Greek translation rescues that shadowy poem:

"Why has the mountains' contempt scared me so much
My soul landed here like a bird flying
from the land of a fruit that never tasted...
That the night's garden violated its vow to the tender darkness
For the first time ever I ponder
a night in which the constelations and the degrees
are but a rumor

......................................................

But when am I going to feel that its darkness
is full of signs,
that I know nothing about its soul's journeys
into the magic, the profound, the luminous,
the impossible"

This incident shows how fiction and fact may be weaved into each other in Oz's 'Tale': whether this was done randomly or with a pro-Israel agenda in mind I am leaving to others to investigate; what I would like to do here instead is to cite, straight from the English translation, the one marvelous paragraph where the author casts a bit of affectionate doubt on Israel (through an aunt's narration of her 1938 journey, along with a Greek and her baby, from Trieste to Tel Aviv):

"I even remember that at one moment I had a fleeting thought, why did I
have to go to the Land of Israel at all? Just to be among Jews? Yet this
Greek girl, who probably didn't even know what a Jew was, was closer to me
than the entire Jewish people. The entire Jewish people seemed to me at
that moment like a great sweaty mass whose belly I was being tempted to
enter, so it could consume me entirely with its digestive juices, and I
said to myself, Sonia, is that what you really want? It's curious that in
Rovno I'd never experienced this fear, that I was going to be consumed by
the digestive juices of the Jewish people. It never came back once I was
here, either. It was just then, for a moment, on that boat, on the way,
when the Greek baby fell asleep in my lap and I could feel it through my
dress as though at that moment she really was flesh of my flesh, even
though she wasn't Jewish, and despite the wicked Jew-hating Antiochus
Epiphanes."]