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January 18, 2005
Book Bites #8
I’m loving these wacky stories by the young Israeli writer Etgar Keret. (Yes, I first heard his work on “Selected Shorts,” for anyone else out there that recently discovered him that way too.) The selections in “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” are about four pages long each, sometimes twisted, sometimes dirty-mouthed, sometimes sobering, always bizarre. In “Hole in the Wall” a boy gets a sidekick in the form of an angel who turns out to be a lying bum. In “Cocked and Locked” (double entendre intended) an Israeli soldier has a mutually degrading showdown with a Palestinian fighter. In “Shoes,” my favorite thus far, a kid’s misunderstanding about the Holocaust leads to an unexpected imaginary triumph for his dead grandfather. The tone throughout is disaffected and uppity. They’re the perfect bedtime reading for me, because so often at night I try to unwind with a book but just find myself taking notes on the writer’s craft and how I might apply it to my own work. But I’ll never be funny in the outrageous way Keret is, so I just sit back and enjoy.
Posted by Rachel at January 18, 2005 03:54 PM
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