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A review by bluepigeon
The Girl on the Fridge by Sondra Silverston, Etgar Keret, Miriam Shlesinger
4.0
I first saw Jellyfish, I think, which I liked a lot. Then I read Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, which I liked. Somewhere in the back where there is an interview she mentioned Keret (and they have worked together before.) And then I saw $9.99, which I also liked, though not as much as Jellyfish. So I decided I should read something by Keret, and The Girl on the Fridge was the first book I could get my hands on. I suppose what I did not expect was the horror aspect of the stories. The rest was familiar from the films I had seen.
I kept thinking the stories reminded me of Gaiman's Sandman comics. Not the parts about Dream and his siblings (the Endless,) but the other parts, like the serial killers who meet up in a hotel, the girl who lives in the building with some bizarre characters, etc. So some horror, some mystery, some bizarre, and some political commentary. If Gaiman, Lynch, and Kafka got together and wrote a bunch of short stories that take place in Israel, this could very well be it.
With that said, Keret does have that home advantage. His stories are very much culturally infused with Israel, the conflict, the everyday urban life. Some stories can easily reproduce the horror of war and conflict, the meaningless struggle. There is always some violence, whether it be a kid being bullied aside from the main story, an Arab being run over for fun by Israeli border patrol, or a severed head of a bunny. Most lead characters are male (if not all?) and most of them are not in charge of the situation. Things happen to them, and usually they suffer. Children have a special place in some of the stories, and they seem to live in the middle of a disturbing life, unaware.
All in all, a pleasure to read, only if you like this kind of thing. If you enjoy the bizarre, the horrifying, the absurd, the surreal, you will enjoy these stories.
I kept thinking the stories reminded me of Gaiman's Sandman comics. Not the parts about Dream and his siblings (the Endless,) but the other parts, like the serial killers who meet up in a hotel, the girl who lives in the building with some bizarre characters, etc. So some horror, some mystery, some bizarre, and some political commentary. If Gaiman, Lynch, and Kafka got together and wrote a bunch of short stories that take place in Israel, this could very well be it.
With that said, Keret does have that home advantage. His stories are very much culturally infused with Israel, the conflict, the everyday urban life. Some stories can easily reproduce the horror of war and conflict, the meaningless struggle. There is always some violence, whether it be a kid being bullied aside from the main story, an Arab being run over for fun by Israeli border patrol, or a severed head of a bunny. Most lead characters are male (if not all?) and most of them are not in charge of the situation. Things happen to them, and usually they suffer. Children have a special place in some of the stories, and they seem to live in the middle of a disturbing life, unaware.
All in all, a pleasure to read, only if you like this kind of thing. If you enjoy the bizarre, the horrifying, the absurd, the surreal, you will enjoy these stories.