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A review by graywacke
A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev
4.0
Maybe if I understood this book a little bit better I would give it five stars. But for now I can only wonder about the various meanings of home and odd series of events at the end that require some rethinking. Maybe I should read it again.
Among the side effects here is a story of Israel's war of independence, and of the mixture and tensions that make up the Jewish side of modern Israel, and of homing pigeons and death and generations and relationships and sex and various explorations of the meaning of home.
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random quotes for my own memory:
Sometimes——with my dark, closely spaced eyes, my desire for wandering and fear of travel, my uttering of prayers and my dread that they will be answered——I feel like the only Jew in my family.
---
I did not attempt to correct him. I had already said two true things in this conversation, and as Meshulam says, "Telling the truth is very good, but it's not something one should make a habit of."
---
"We'll lie on our backs inside the house and look up at the heavens. We'll see if darkness really falls, as they say, or whether it rises."
We undressed, lay down next to each other. The walls hid us away from human eyes; the gaping roof exposed us to glances from above: those of migrating birds, of pigeons returning home, perhaps even you eyes, if you really are up there.
The greater light set and disappeared; its luminescence faded, then extinguished. First it lost its beingness, then its name. Darkness neither fell nor rose. It was not created all at once, like the light or the sea or the trees or man; rather it took shape, spread, thickened, and was. The exposed beams of the roof, which previously had stood blackened against the sky, were now swallowed up inside it. The lesser light, that evening merely a narrow sickle, brightened in the west. Exuberant stars shone. Spiraling and naked, holding hands——this too was part of Tiraleh's orchestration——we watched them multiply and make a sieve of the dome of heaven.
---
We lingered by the memorial plaque, where above the names of the fallen someone had engraved the following: HERE THEIR LIVES DEPARTED BUT THEIR COURAGE DID NOT. "Well put but untrue!" my mother exclaimed. "When life departs, everything departs. Love and courage and knowledge and memory..."
Among the side effects here is a story of Israel's war of independence, and of the mixture and tensions that make up the Jewish side of modern Israel, and of homing pigeons and death and generations and relationships and sex and various explorations of the meaning of home.
---
random quotes for my own memory:
Sometimes——with my dark, closely spaced eyes, my desire for wandering and fear of travel, my uttering of prayers and my dread that they will be answered——I feel like the only Jew in my family.
---
I did not attempt to correct him. I had already said two true things in this conversation, and as Meshulam says, "Telling the truth is very good, but it's not something one should make a habit of."
---
"We'll lie on our backs inside the house and look up at the heavens. We'll see if darkness really falls, as they say, or whether it rises."
We undressed, lay down next to each other. The walls hid us away from human eyes; the gaping roof exposed us to glances from above: those of migrating birds, of pigeons returning home, perhaps even you eyes, if you really are up there.
The greater light set and disappeared; its luminescence faded, then extinguished. First it lost its beingness, then its name. Darkness neither fell nor rose. It was not created all at once, like the light or the sea or the trees or man; rather it took shape, spread, thickened, and was. The exposed beams of the roof, which previously had stood blackened against the sky, were now swallowed up inside it. The lesser light, that evening merely a narrow sickle, brightened in the west. Exuberant stars shone. Spiraling and naked, holding hands——this too was part of Tiraleh's orchestration——we watched them multiply and make a sieve of the dome of heaven.
---
We lingered by the memorial plaque, where above the names of the fallen someone had engraved the following: HERE THEIR LIVES DEPARTED BUT THEIR COURAGE DID NOT. "Well put but untrue!" my mother exclaimed. "When life departs, everything departs. Love and courage and knowledge and memory..."