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Wśród Swoich (2012)

by Amos Oz(Favorite Author)

4.04 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Rebis

review 1: This was the first book by Amos Oz I ever read. Had heard lots of good things about his writing,and after reading it I can undersand why.This is a story about kibbutz-life in Israel. It is told from several persons point of view, focusing in one part especially on some characters, while others are figuring in the background and then in the next focusing on others. This makes the story great, because he never trully leaves the characters be, but let ypu se the development of all, though from different perspectives.All the while it is the very human questions which are in the forefront, like love, how will my actions be perceives, do I fit in here (is kibbutz-life really for me) and the disappointment elders can suffer from when the young do not live up to their stand... moreards.
review 2: 'Between Friends' by Amos Oz is a look back at the days of the kibbutz era in the 1950's. The book is a set of interconnected stories, each one about a person who lives on Kibbutz Yekhat. As these personal stories are told, the reader also learns about kibbutz life and ideals. We hear about the Marxist and progressive ideas that reign on the kibbutz, how people argue about bringing up children and whether the children belong to the family or to the kibbutz. There is also the petty gossip that goes on about who is sleeping with whom and what relationships are being started and which ones are breaking up. The idea of everybody working in order to profit the whole abounds on Kibbutz Yekhat yet the kibbutz is not free of complaints from the workers to change jobs or go off to study something else. Women are treated as second-classs citizens on the kibbutz and there is the start of a feminist uprising. "At first, when the kibbutz was founded, we were all a family. True, even then there were rifts, but we were close. Every evening we'd get together and sing rousing songs and nostalgic ballads till the small hours. Afterwards, we went to sleep in tents, and if anyone talked in their sleep, we all heard them. These days, everyone lives in a separate apartment and we're at each other's throats." As one of the kibbutz members states, "The kibbutz makes small changes in the social order but man's difficult nature doesn't change. A committee vote will never be able to eradicate envy, pettiness, or greed."When this book takes place, the original pioneering members of the kibbutz are quite old and the leadership has passed down to the second generation. Some of the members are afraid that the original passion that motivated the kibbutzim is gone and that the kibbutz will fall into a bourgeois state and "become nothing more than well-kept garden communities populated by homeowners driven by material pleasures."A sampling of the short stories in this book include one about Zvi, a man whose life is beleaguered by his perceptions of catastrophes that occur worldwide. This is all he talks about. My sense is that this might be due to Asperger's syndrome as he can't bear to be touched, he has never married and he is obsessed with catastrophic events. There is Nahum, the kibbutz electrician and a mild-mannered man, a widow whose only son was killed in a retaliation strike. His seventeen year-old daughter Edna, with whom he feels close, has taken up with a man Nahum's age. Nahum is tormented about what to do - should he accept the situation or confront David, a kibbutz founder and his old friend. Martin is very ill with emphysema yet he occasionally still smokes, relying on his cigarettes as much as his oxygen. He has always believed in the principle of work and the negative impact of personal possessions. He believes that children should be raised communally and not by their families. He is a kind and fair man with a strong ideology. During his last days, Osnat and he become close and she cares for him. He even makes an attempt to start teaching Esperanto on the kibbutz, believing that a single language will prevent miscommunication between people.All of the people interact with one another in some way and the kibbutz is portrayed like a family with its secrets, intrigues, dysfunctions and loyalties. The book is very well translated from the hebrew and, like other books by Amos Oz, portrays a picture of Israel that is not always shown to outsiders. less

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