City of a thousand gates : a novel /

Vast in scope, Sacks' stunning first novel takes place in the contemporary West Bank and follows a large cast of characters to explore the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the heart of the story are two ill-fated 14-year-olds: Yael Solomon, a Jewish girl brutally stabbed to death in her bedroom, and Salem Abu-Khdeir, a Palestinian boy who is cornered and beaten into a coma outside of a mall. Vera, a German reporter who is sleeping with an Israeli soccer player, circles the hospital waiting to learn Salem's fate. Israeli soldier Ori wrestles with the knowledge that one of his friends was involved in the attack. Emily, an American, is adjusting to new motherhood and the contradictions that life in Jerusalem brings to her political views and morals. Another act of violence at one of the city's many checkpoints further upends the characters' lives. Sacks imbues her first novel with foreboding at every turn: "Every second is the second before some horrible act of violence." And yet, through her vibrant characters, she paints a moving and powerful portrait of those who love the region passionately despite its many tensions and dangers.

Sacks's ambitious and panoramic debut gives a glimpse into the everyday experiences of 28 residents of the West Bank whose extraordinary, tension-filled lives embody the region's challenges and contradictions. The characters (don't worry, there's an index) include a professor at Bethlehem University who idly dreams of escaping to America, an American expat and new mother having doubts about her young family, a German reporter eager to make a name for herself, and a Jewish American teenager about to get married. Their individual crises intersect in various ways--generally involving the university, the military, and the ubiquitous checkpoints--and play out against the backdrop of ongoing sectarian drama. After a 14-year-old Israeli girl is stabbed to death in her West Bank settlement home, a mob of young Israeli men retaliate by beating a Palestinian teenager (with no connection to the stabbing) nearly to death. Sacks demonstrates a deep knowledge of the place and its people, and does an excellent job of inhabiting the many points of view through strong voices and rich emotion, making palpable the hate and love at odds not only across cultures but within individual hearts. Fans of Nathan Englander will find much to love. (Feb.)

DEBUT After a 14-year-old Israeli settler in the West Bank is stabbed to death in her bedroom, it's only a matter of time before retaliation begins: Palestinian teenager Salem is beaten into a coma by 20 Jewish youths. Vera, a German journalist living in Tel Aviv, chafes at having to write a puff piece about a luxury hotel when she would rather cultivate these important, hard-hitting stories. She interviews Samar, a Palestinian professor at Bethlehem University whose day begins with another stressful encounter with armed soldiers Danny and Ori at a checkpoint. When Salem succumbs to his injuries, Vera records viral footage of Palestinians spiriting Salem's shrouded body over a border wall behind the hospital, ensuring a martyr's burial. Through the eyes of these and many more compelling characters, Sacks creates a snapshot of lives shattered by decades of conflict. Parents, students, and soldiers live in a constant state of dread waiting for the next bomb to explode, while barriers, restrictions, and curfews curtail any semblance of normality for those on either side of the walls surely built to inhibit understanding. VERDICT This ambitious, forceful debut novel, likely informed by Sacks's years studying in Tel Aviv, personalizes with startling clarity the seemingly unsolvable conundrum that is the Middle East. This is a thinking reader's book.--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

The lives of a diverse cast of characters intertwine against the backdrop of violence and bitter conflict in Israel and Palestine. Jerusalem, the "city of a thousand gates," is also a city of a thousand experiences of occupation; in Sacks' debut, she has seemingly set herself the ambitious goal of representing as many of these experiences as possible. As they reel from twinned acts of violence--a 14-year-old Israeli girl in a settlement stabbed to death, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy beaten into a coma--various inhabitants and visitors in this contested region go about their daily lives, dealing with the usual complexities of friendship, desire, and marriage on top of the sensationalized politics that envelop them. The novel shifts among the perspectives of more than a dozen characters: Arab Palestinians living in Israel proper and in the occupied territories, Israeli Jews of various political orientations, American Jews with complicated and divergent relationships to Zionism, a German journalist trying to make her name by writing about it all. Sacks' prose is evocative and often a pleasure to read, but her narrative sacrifices depth for the sake of breadth. Her dogged attempt to show the multifacetedness of this extraordinarily fraught conflict and humanize its players is admirable in theory but sometimes ineffective in execution. In her attempt to humanize the media circus that so often attends news coverage of Israel and Palestine, she actually ends up flattening it, as each character's narrative feels increasingly like a counterpoint to another equally subjective narrative, a mere means to a didactic end. While some characters, such as Emily and Vera, are rich and complex, others veer into caricature, reading like boxes the author felt obligated to check rather than authentic, artful creations. With its tit-for-tat violence and carefully varied cast of characters, the novel projects an oversimple thesis that Israelis and Palestinians (as well as those with other stakes in the conflict) are both victims and perpetrators, both participants and observers in cycles of hatred and violence. The extension of that thesis is the treacly trope that if these parties could simply understand one another better, the conflict would be solved. To her credit, Sacks attempts to preempt some of the critiques commonly leveled at such narratives--for instance, she makes clear the imbalance of power in a fight between occupier and occupied--but even the inclusion of these important nuances feels inevitably formulaic. Sacks is a gifted prose stylist, but the stunning loveliness of large portions of her debut is unfortunately obscured by its formulaic both-sides-ism. A promising talent in service of an admirable goal resulting in a disappointingly didactic novel. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.