Review by Booklist Review
In this debut novel, award-winning Israeli playwright Mazya offers a mordant meditation on the assets and liabilities of a May-December romance. Middle-age astrophysics professor Ilan Ben Nathan suspects his nubile young wife, Naomi, is having an affair. After observing Naomi and her lover in the midst of a tryst, he decides to confront the man (a disheveled Russian immigrant who's a dead ringer for Nick Nolte) at his Haifa abode. A moment of rage leads to murder with a weapon that's an ingenious twist on the proverbial smoking gun. Ilan must determine how best to dispose of the body, and he turns to his unsentimental mother, who offers a macabre solution that alters both of their lives. A professor of dramatic writing at Tel Aviv University, Mazya renders complex characters and clever dialogue, though Ilan's stream-of-consciousness reflections may be tiresome for some. This European best-seller is sure to win over American readers with its provocative blend of sly humor and suspense. --Allison Block Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this surprisingly fresh, deeply sardonic debut novel from a famed Israeli playwright, obsessive love drives a middle-aged man to murder. Ilhan, a brilliant astrophysics professor whose life revolves around his young wife, Naomi, tries desperately to hang on to reality after uncovering her passionate affair with a charismatic nature photographer. Burdened by anxiety and self-doubt-which he treats with calls to mom and plenty of Valium cocktails- the professor tries to ignore the romance in the hope it will fizzle. His eventual confrontation with Naomi's alluring lover turns homicidal, resulting in the photographer's late-night burial in the relatively new grave of Ilhan's dead kindergarten teacher. Piling guilt and paranoia on top of overwhelming angst, the neurotic professor struggles to keep his macabre secret from Naomi, and from Anton, his buddy who just happens to be a detective. It shouldn't add up, but Mayza, in first-person narration that shifts jarringly from matter-of-fact to vertiginous, makes Ilhan at once identifiable and deeply alien. She skillfully conveys a personality in collapse, while satirizing every one of the clich?s to which it succumbs. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A debut novel from a noted Israeli playwright presents a macabre set of scenes that sometimes resembles stage direction. Protagonist and narrator Ilan is a middle-aged professor of astrophysics at the Technion in Haifa, Israel. His life consists of a series of obsessions: Is his young, beautiful wife, Naomi, having an affair? Why can't he finish the book he is writing that is months overdue? Why can't he socialize better? He starts smoking again (a habit he had given up) and becomes addicted to Valium. The suspense builds, the affair is real, the lover is murdered, and Ilan's mother helps her bumbling son dispose of the body in a hair-raising scenario. What happens to this hapless fellow and his wife after the murder involves many plot twists. The book, which has Woody Allen overtones, should be of great interest to readers of black humor and psychological thrillers.-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This darkly funny first novel by Israeli playwright Mazya combines the suspense of a murder mystery with the absurdity of a Woody Allen movie. The narrator/hero is Ilan Ben Nathan, a dithering, self-critical professor of astrophysics who at 48 rashly marries a sexy beauty of 25. The narrative voice is captivating--surprising considering that the professor is an ungrateful mama's boy. ("I can always dump everything I spare others on [my mother] which is her only good point," he candidly observes.) There's good evidence that he has become a slacker at work and, until the moment he snaps, humiliatingly ineffectual in encounters with his wife's intimidatingly virile lover, whom Ilan forlornly describes as resembling Nick Nolte. Nevertheless, Ilan's honesty, curiosity and weary concern for his fellow beings endear him to the reader, as when he sees toddlers at a nursery school, "standing pressed to the fence, waiting for their mothers to come and fetch them, worn out and helpless at the end of a day of exhausting survival." The charm of this work lies in the author's adroit use of her powers to observe and analyze human behavior. As her characters grapple with one another, she is aware of what each seeks to gain: The play of short-lived emotions--the impulse toward self-pity, or generosity, or resignation, or anger--bring her narrative to life. Capable of the subtlest poignancy at one moment, Mazya shocks us with the most savage humor the next--but always with a gleeful sense of the power of human beings to astonish one another with their ingenuity, their passion, their foolishness. The cleverness and vitality of this narrative made it a bestseller in Israel, as it should be here. Mazya describes one brilliant character as "original without being eccentric." It's praise she deserves herself. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
