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A number of excellent works of fiction by Israeli writers have been published in English this year. Yet it’s been jarring at times to read portraits of a world that differs so sharply from our present reality defined by Oct. 7 and its reverberations.
One of these writers is Lihi Lapid, a celebrated journalist and fiction author who may still be best known as the wife of Yair Lapid, the former Israeli prime minister and current opposition leader. Her latest novel, “On Her Own,” a bestseller when it was published in Hebrew in 2021, is now available in a fine translation by Sandra Silverston. It is the first of Lapid’s books released by an U.S. publishing house, although the timing of its March launch could hardly have been worse, given the long shadow of Oct. 7 and a generally cold reception for Israeli authors in the international literary world right now.
The novel’s complicated plot centers around Nina, an Israeli teen nearing high school graduation who is desperate for a life more exciting than her town promises. Ignoring her mother’s pleas, she becomes involved romantically with Shmueli, a small-time criminal years older than Nina and already married. Nina is sucked into an unanticipated darkness, and the book begins immediately after she has been sexually assaulted and has witnessed a murder.
Escaping Shmueli and his thug companions, she takes refuge in a Tel Aviv apartment stairwell, where she is discovered by an elderly resident. The woman, a widow named Carmela, mistakes Nina for her granddaughter Dana, who now lives in the U.S., and invites her in.
Nina quickly pieces together that Carmela has dementia. Although Nina worries that Carmela will come out of her fog, the risk of being found by Shmueli carries much harsher consequences. Nina actively embraces her identity as the granddaughter and begins taking care of Carmela, who lives alone and has been grievously neglected.
The neighbors realize that something is amiss, but they are pleased to see Carmela finally receive the attention she needs.
The omniscient narrative shifts freely among characters. We witness Nina’s mother, an emigre from the former Soviet Union, desperately searching for her daughter. We watch the detestable Shmueli as he realizes he is in growing legal danger. And we follow the police as they prepare to snare Shmueli.
But an essential subplot takes place in the U.S., as Carmela’s son Itamar and his wife, Naama, assess their future in a country that was meant to be a temporary stop, but has been too alluring to leave. Now in their seventh year as ex-pats, with Itamar having recently been promoted to a key role in his tech company, Naama embraces their identity as “citizens of the world.” But Itamar, who is pained that his children respond in English when spoken to in Hebrew, is ambivalent about putting down roots in America.
Itamar decides to visit Israel for Yom HaZikaron, Israel Memorial Day, to support his mother as they visit the grave of Itamar’s older brother, Uri, killed years ago while serving in the military.
Meanwhile, Nina and Carmela are living out a convenient fiction as Carmela is getting the benefit of an enhanced quality of life and of an alternative reality superior to the truth — that the actual Dana has no desire to visit her grandmother. And Nina is recovering her self-respect as she discovers a newfound sense of purpose.
This may read a bit like a soap opera, but the large cast of characters are enriched by Lapid’s emphatic attention to them. And in this novel, written foremost for Israelis, the characters also reflect areas of challenge in Israeli society. The issues that play out within these families mirror issues in the country at large, applying both to those who have come to Israel, and to those who have departed Israel, in search of a better life.
Indeed, the growing Israeli diaspora looms large. Although Lapid avoids polemic, it’s hard not to read Itamar’s neglect of his mother as inseparable from his neglect of his motherland. This is where the novel can feel like eavesdropping on a tension in many geographically dispersed Israeli families. The vast majority of Israelis in the U.S. are profoundly engaged with their Israeli identity but unlikely to return to their native country to live. It’s a dilemma and often a source of anguish that most American Jews are spared.
Another pronounced Israeli theme in the book is the pervasive shadow of loss. The novel’s action is set not simply in Jewish time but in Israeli time, taking place between Passover and Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day. The book’s real climax revolves around Yom HaZikaron, which barely registers in most American Jews’ consciousness. But from the perspective of the thousands of Israeli families who have lost loved ones to conflict — the day’s commemorations were expanded in recent decades to include victims of terrorism — it is a profound day of coming together in brokenness.
In this regard, the novel feels very much relevant both before and after the atrocities of Oct. 7. As Lapid told the Times of Israel, “Women have reached out to me. One sadly said, ‘When I read your book I felt bad for that poor Carmela. Now I am this Carmela.’”