From Powells.com
Our favorite books of the year.
Synopses & Reviews
A brilliant, life-affirming, and hilarious memoir from a "genius” (The New York Times) and master storyteller.
The seven years between the birth of Etgar Keret's son and the death of his father were good years, though still full of reasons to worry. Lev is born in the midst of a terrorist attack. Etgar's father gets cancer. The threat of constant war looms over their home and permeates daily life.
What emerges from this dark reality is a series of sublimely absurd ruminations on everything from Etgar's three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mind-set behind Angry Birds. There's Lev's insistence that he is a cat, releasing him from any human responsibilities or rules. Etgar's siblings, all very different people who have chosen radically divergent paths in life, come together after his father's shivah to experience the grief and love that tie a family together forever. This wise, witty memoir — Etgar's first nonfiction book published in America, and told in his inimitable style — is full of wonder and life and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humor.
Review
“Keret calls it a memoir but it’s really a TARDIS — a time machine that
does two kinds of magic at once. First, it takes us back through seven
years of Keret’s history, showing us the world (its beauty, madness, and
inescapable strangeness) through his sharp and sympathetic
observations. It’s not an overtly political book, but one defined by
violence, bookended by life and death.” NPR
Review
“Keret’s deadpan tales, collected in such books as Suddenly, a Knock on
the Door (2012) and The Girl on the Fridge (2008), often blur the
line between the real and the surreal…This unusual perspective makes
Keret’s new autobiography especially intriguing…the book brings
together his engagingly cockeyed observations on a variety of subjects,
from his disparate family to run-ins with cabdrivers and pushy moms at
the park.” Washington Post
Review
“Etgar Keret’s The Seven Good Years examines the absurdity,
fragility and unpredictability of life… in true Keret style, it promises
to be both poignant and uproariously funny.” Chicago Tribune
Review
“Spare wry… Without overplaying any single aspect of a complicated life
in complicated times in a complicated place, Keret’s lovely memoir
retains its essential human warmth, demonstrating that with memoirs,
less can often be more.” Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)
About the Author
Etgar Keret was born in Tel Aviv in 1967. He is a recipient of the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the author, most recently, of the story collection
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. His work has appeared in
The New Yorker,
The Wall Street Journal,
The Paris Review, and
The New York Times, among many other publications, and on This American Life,” where he is a regular contributor.