Reviews

World Cup Wishes by Eshkol Nevo

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nonabgo's review against another edition

5.0

If there's one perfect book about friendship, I think this is it. The story of four childhood friends and their relationship over the years, one that survived despite being constantly challenged by drafting, career struggles, marriages, separations.

I was drawn into it almost instantly, something few books manage to do for me. The theme, the ever-present football references, the simple and straight-forward writing, with its random almost lyrical paragraphs, the setting, the stream of consciousness, all these elements came together in one beautiful novel, which reminded me how precious long-time friendships are and how rare and therefore worth preserving.

I don't remember having read another book set in Israel. We tend to read a lot of books about Jews and their history, but not so much about their present life in the land they struggled so much to achieve (and which they guard fiercely). I was drawn to the unapologetic, un-idealized version of Nevo's Israel, one where people fight because they are forced to, not necessarily because they believe in what they are fighting for. A clash of old and new, of past trauma and the impossibility to overcome it, of beautiful landscapes dirtied by the horrors of violence, of trying to build a life in a place where modernity clashes with religious extremism.

This is the background in which the lives of Yuval, Yoav, Amichai and Ofir's lives flow and overlap an d where their friendship blooms and occasionally cools down. It's a non-intrusive background, once that slightly makes itself known, but whose ramifications affect the characters and their friendship in significant ways.

The story of their friendship is written by one of the four - Yuval - , most fitting, as being the only one without a "true" purpose in life. While his friends find meaningful jobs, get married and have children, he seems to be stuck in a life that he doesn't particularly enjoy, devoid of success and pining for a woman who will never be his. Yuval isn't even particularly good looking or smart, he constantly demeans himself and speaks about his friends highly that he does about himself. And, while he writes a character-focused story about this relationship, we get to study him, dissect him, and, page by page, love and hate him, root for him but also, in turn, for each of the other three individuals of this quartet, each different that the other in significant ways, yet with lives so entangled, that they sometimes blend together as one.

This is not a simple story, the one Yuval tells. It's full of happiness, sadness, betrayal and forgiveness, the story of a brotherhood. I haven't read many books about male friendship - in fact, I don't think I remember any who wasn't as old as "The Three Musketeers", and what most surprised and attracted me was the raw, sincere account of their relationship, without unnecessary machismo and bravado, where feelings are actually expressed, insecurities put on the table and men treated as actual human beings.

Nevo was a beautiful surprise, unexpected, and his novel will stay with me for a long time.