Share for friends:

Read Look For Me (2005)

Look for Me (2005)

Online Book

Author
Rating
3.45 of 5 Votes: 5
Your rating
ISBN
0679312978 (ISBN13: 9780679312970)
Language
English
Publisher
vintage canada

Look For Me (2005) - Plot & Excerpts

Eleven years ago Dana Hillman's husband caught fire and then disappeared. Dana, a photographer who joins the Israeli pro-Palestine activists at demonstrations in the occupied territories and writes trashy romance novels in secret to pay her bills, has never given up hope of seeing him again. Every year she pays for a full-page ad in the paper, a message to Daniel, saying she'll wait for him. She gives interviews about it, hoping he'll hear and know that she's waiting and that she doesn't care what he looks like. But finding him is another matter entirely. He was in the Reserves when it happened, folding laundry - an architect, Daniel was a terrible soldier. The army send him disability cheques to a Tel Aviv address, a flat where he's never lived. Dana has that address, but it's a dead end. No one in the army will give her his real address, but when she meets a man on the beach called Aaron who works for the army in a "special unit" and declares that he can find out Daniel's address. Yet whatever he found out, he suddenly doesn't want to tell her.As Dana goes through her life, attending demonstrations against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, taking photos, writing formulaic romance, she meets Rafi, a young man married to neurotic pianist with wealthy parents - a woman who can't even touch their child, Naomi. Despite Dana's committed and loyal love for Daniel, even after all these years, at thirty-six she finds herself falling for Rafi again. Rafi, despite the competition, has already fallen for Dana. She's something of a legend in the area, and he's seen her with her camera at many rallies and in interviews. Everyone knows the story of her husband.Finding someone who can help her locate him is far from easy. This is Israel, where security, secrets and paranoia run high. All she wants is to find her husband and get him back, but finding him is only the start. Her assumption that everything can go back to the way it was when she does find him shows how short-sighted and naively hopeful her love for Daniel has become.The first book in Ravel's Tel Aviv trilogy - stand-alone books that are set in Israel and handle the ultra-sensitive theme of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory (showing both a fierce love of Israel and also a pro-Palestinian stance) - was Ten Thousand Lovers, which I read several years ago and it is still one of my favourite books of all time. It was intense, powerful, moving, thought-provoking and written in a way that suited the characters perfectly. This second instalment in the trilogy is written in much the same way, but sadly the story didn't connect with me as much as I'd hoped. Part of the problem was Dana herself, a character whom I liked but found rather too stubborn, naive and stiff. That's also connected to Ravel's style, which for me stunted Dana's character too much and made her sadly two-dimensional. I also found the plot itself at first slightly confusing, then hugely anti-climactic.Let me begin with the plot. At first, the way I read it, I thought Daniel was dead. Then I realised that he wasn't dead, he was missing - that he caught fire, was in hospital with serious burns to his upper body and head, and then vanished. Later we learn that he snuck out and disappeared, when I had thought the implication was that the Army had "disappeared" him (in South American-dictator fashion) - not that I could see a reason for it. The way Dana doles out little bits of information about Daniel's accident and disappearance kept leading me to think in one direction, then have to reverse and rethink it and form a new picture in my head. But what really disappointed me was how built-up it was, with Army people offering to help her then, when they see the answer on their computer, clamming up. Why? It made a big mystery out of the whole thing but why would those people care whether Dana found out, even if Daniel himself didn't want her to know? How would they know that and what difference would it make to them? People like Aaron, at first enthusiastic and boastful about being able to find the information she wants (Daniel's real address), suddenly tell her to move on and forget about him, and that it's not worth their job to tell her what they found out. It didn't make sense to me, especially when we do find out the truth (I even reached the point where I wanted her to shut up about him all the time - not a good sign).Dana herself narrates the story, often going back in time to tell the story of how she met Daniel and their early years of marriage together - a very ordinary marriage, with Daniel showing signs of not being as committed as Dana is. I found it hard to really understand and connect with Dana. She is both open and simple and also oddly mysterious - in the sense that I couldn't always understand her actions or choices. She seemed sketched-in, rather than fleshed-out. The story covers from Saturday through the week to the following Monday, and we follow Dana in her daily life as she interacts with her neighbours - an ex-prostitute turned fortune teller who lives upstairs with her mother; a legless young man who was once the life of the party and is now deeply bitter and determined to make everyone around him feel bad; and an ageing rocker who can barely look after himself anymore. She fends off proposals from Benni, a friend who convinces himself he's in love with her, and every Wednesday she has dinner with a middle-aged doctor, which everyone teases her about. Dana works part-time at an insurance company, writing letters in English, and continues to live in the apartment she and Daniel first moved into when they got married when she was just nineteen.In a way - and I rather hate this kind of off-the-cuff, simplistic analysis - you could read Dana's relationship and search for her husband as a kind of metaphor for Israeli-Palestinian relations. In a way, when I look at it sideways. Daniel is disfigured and in hiding, and his disappearance is based on a false reality - something he thought he overheard while in hospital but which didn't actually happen. His treatment of Dana, while in a very vulnerable, wounded state, still makes me angry. What a dick! She has every right to be furious at him - I would be, in her place. All based on a misunderstanding, a miscommunication - or an utter lack of communication and understanding, neither side giving the other a chance to be heard or believed. And Dana, with her stubborn refusal to give up, is understandable - I don't think I could live with my husband's abrupt and mysterious disappearance or move on easily. I'm not saying they're an analogy for Palestine and Israel, just that their relationship is sort of symbolic.The real star of the story is, of course, the land itself. You won't get a history lesson or a deep political analysis; Look For Me presents various everyday, ordinary people - the people who don't make the news or the UN conferences - and their viewpoints. I hadn't realised that there are Israelis who organise to travel into Palestine to join the Palestinian protestors, to offer their bodies, as it were, as protection against the Israeli army - which thinks twice before firing in case they hit their own people. The stories woven into this novel open a window onto what it's like to live in Palestine - and Israel - and what regular Israeli's think about the occupation. It doesn't deal with suicide bombers or those kinds of attacks, but it presents a richly sympathetic view of the plight of everyday, ordinary Palestinians. It offered more insight into Palestine than Israel, in that sense. The perspective you get of Israel is one of a country - and a people - preoccupied with death."...I sometimes think there's a reason for all these freak accidents. Some message. A message from above.""What message?""I don't know. That the place is dangerous. That we need to be stronger, more aware. Another guy I know got eaten alive by bees. In my high school two kids drowned, and one girl died when a branch fell on her during a hike. I swear, it's weird.""Those sorts of things happen everywhere, you just don't hear about them. We're a small country, so we hear about every death. We hear, and we also remember. We feel bad, and we remember.""Yes, that's true. We remember.""Also people here are careless. They drive like they're homicidal and on amphetamines. They think they have to be tough, so they aren't self-protective. They don't avoid bees and they swim where there aren't any lifeguards. The city doesn't clear boulders. We don't look after ourselves, that's the problem. We're too arrogant and vain and we're obsessed with being tough. Maybe we're also suicidal." [pp.111-2]The dialogue, which often runs on for several pages without much narration in-between, read a bit simplistic to me at times. This contributed to my struggle to connect with Dana, but it wasn't just her: most of the characters spoke in a way that rang weirdly in my inner ear. Sometimes they spoke like simplistic philosophers, sometimes like children - they didn't speak in vernacular, or colloquialisms, or with that kind of lazy fluidity that people generally speak with, cutting corners, contracting, um-ming and ah-hing. It just didn't read terribly naturally. I remember that quality from Ten Thousand Lovers but it worked in that book, it fitted. Here it was an obstacle, upsetting the flow and getting in the way of me understanding and empathising with the characters.I have the third book in the Tel Aviv Trilogy, A Wall of Light, as well as several other books by Ravel still to read - and I haven't lost my enthusiasm for reading more of her work. This book worked well with other readers; it really comes down to stylistic devices and we all have our own personal preferences. There were elements to this book that I enjoyed, especially the insight into living in Israel and being supportive of Palestinian efforts to end the occupation. Overall, though, it was disappointing and I was unable to come to care about Dana or her search for Daniel.

What do You think about Look For Me (2005)?

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Read books by author Edeet Ravel

Read books in series tel aviv trilogy

Read books in category Middle Grade & Children's