This is a multiperspective and multigenerational story.

I didn’t love everything about this book... but there were moments that felt gut-wrenching truthful.
It’s an intricate story revolving around Hemda Horovitz...( family matriarch), who’s in a hospital bed during her last living days, in Jerusalem....
with collective narration and stories from Hermda’s adult kids.

Hermda grew up on a Kibbutz in Israel. She recalls painful memories from growing up with her parents on a Kibbutz- ( especially the affects from
her hostile-domineering father, and memories of a lake on her Kibbutz), and thoughts about her adult children and grandchildren... who come to visit during her dying days.

Collectively, (stream of consciousness recalls), we hear other painful memories, stories, and present challenges, from Avner, and Dina. ( adult son & daughter)

Dina lost a child: a twin. She wants to adopt another child - but her husband and teen daughter aren’t equally thrilled.

Avner, has become over weight. He’s lost his hair. He’s looking older than his mid-age. He’s an attorney in a loveless marriage.
While visiting Hermda in the hospital he becomes obsessed with another woman whose own husband is dying.

Zeruya Shalev is extremely talented in portraying intimate fragility’s of family relationships: belonging, individual personalities and characteristics, petty rivalries,
secrets, lies, sacrifice, mocking, acceptance, cynicism, neglect, selfish concerns, failures, nonconformity, betrayals, blame, disappointments, loss, hope, desires, delusions, protests, tragedies, regret, obligations, redemption, poison thinking, gut moments of truth, desperate need for forgiveness, and love.

Zeruya also gives us a flavor of contemporary life in Israel - being Jews - with all the complexities and disturbances from living in Israel.
My own memories came rushing back from when I lived on a Kibbutz one year in Israel myself.

This is an insightful powerful
read - reflective character study - with raw human interest - storytelling......but this novel requires commitment.
It’s long.
Mysteries and memories unveiled themselves slowly.

The author provides
valuable understanding of how history has a way of repeating itself - toxicity and love - that remain in the lives of family members from generation to generation.

Here’s a sample excerpt... words from our main protagonist: Hermda:
“She must not release the torrent raging inside her, she has to keep it trapped in her lungs, so it burns only her.
She gave them so much, over the years, and now it seems this is the last favor they will ever ask of her, and even if this is bound up with total cessation of breathing she will take it on, prove to them her devotion, by the kitchen window I shall burn a torch of memory, by the kitchen window I shall weep, and when they return they will find here on the floor a broken shell, repulsive gunge, the remains of life”.

Emotionally... this novel was a heavy hitter. Just looking at motherhood and orphanhood, alone, was overflowing with distress.

I enjoyed Zeruya’s new book, “Pain”, more then this one -
but Zeruya’s ability to write emotional scenes with sympathetic and unsympathetic characters is both sharp and tender. Magdalith366 120

To przejecha?o po mnie jak kilkutonowy poci?g pe?en goryczy, ?alu, smutku i beznadziei. ?ycie to rozczarowanie, tak. Niemal wy??cznie o tym jest ta powie??. "Tak szybko znów nie si?gn? po t? autork?" - my?la?am sobie ca?y czas. Ci??ko. Nie wiem, czy chc? si? znów zmaga? z takim ci??arem. Jednak na sam koniec, na ostatniej, 524. stronie... o, Kryste. Zreszt?, zobaczcie sami. Warto. Ale nie b?dzie ?atwo i mi?o.
Oczyszczaj?ce prze?ycie, niesamowita narracja, wspania?a autorka. 13 s Miruna20

I just love Jewish writers!They are such fine observers of the human mind and especially of family relationships. Lovely book! I enjoyed it almost as much as Grossman's Till the end of the land.12 s Milly Cohen1,168 359

No es posible esta escritora!! Es mi cuarto libro que le leo y no dejo de impresionarme. Su ritmo no te deja respirar y su forma te mete hasta el mismísimo fondo de la protagonista (siempre escribe en primera persona). No cansa a pesar de hacerlo siempre igual pues sus problemáticas son tan humanamente diferentes. Wow y bravo por ella.
11 s Je?? tre??283 626

Intelektualny wysi?ek, który zostaje wynagrodzony.8 s Magdelanye1,780 228

How dark are the deals woven...in the name of love and sacrifice, without contract and without witnesses, without words and without mercy....hiding behind our inadaquacy we decide with an idle thought the fate of those dearest to us. p138

mysterious threads guide our lives, blind tramcars we roam the streets, incapable of looking up at the sky to see the network of cables above our heads. p134

Some people seem to born out of sorts with the rest of the world. Far from happiness, far from achievement....loving too much or too little...the affront was deeply ingrained-beyond repair. p6& 7

Hemda was such a person, at odds with even her name and especially with the opinions of others. But now Hemda is dying. As she her life's choices, the daughter she couldn't love and the son she loved too much go through their own reckoning and can only marvel at their mothers transformation.

Where were all her years? What she doesn't remember will no longer exist, and maybe it never existed in the first place. p3

culture-conflict death documentary-fiction ...more6 s H.A. LeuschelAuthor 5 books279

Ein wuchtiges Buch über vier Generationen einer Familie in Israel, wo emotionale Traumata, die Geschichte Israels, familiäre Konflikte und auch das Problem von Menschenrechtsverletzungen von verschiedenen Perspektiven beleuchtet wird. Vor allem aber geht es um die Beziehungen zwischen Eltern und Kindern, ehrlich und ohne jeden Pathos, jedoch mit viel Feingefühl beschrieben und bearbeitet.6 s Ruchama FeuermanAuthor 9 books54

I feel ashamed writing a review when I read only the first 40 pages. Never did that before, but there it is. I was drawn in by Shalev's deeply insightful and beautiful writing, by the fantastic blurbs she received from Nicole Krauss and Amos Oz, by her awards, and anyway, when you give me a novel set in Israel with all those family issues thrown in, I run. But why then did I keep falling asleep? Why couldn't I get into it? I guess I'm old-fashioned. Where were the scenes, the dialogue, all that stuff that immerses you in a novel? Instead I saw huge clumps of paragraphs. Still, I tried. But when I couldn't even tell who was who and when was when, I gave up. The fault must be mine. I remember David Grossman's novel, Till the End of the Land, had the same tic, those huge sprawling paragraphs, which in the end forced me to stop reading, at around page 95. 4 s Karin Baele211 41

3,5*: 3 voor de eerste helft van het boek, 4 voor de tweede.4 s Milly Cohen1,168 359

4.5
Es tremenda su escritura, desgarradora su historia, maravillosa su lectura.
Ella no te deja distraerte, y yo me distraigo a veces, eso hizo que me perdiera en ocasiones.
Me encanta el libro, hay que conocerla para saber lo que te espera cuando la lees, pero no llega al nivel de los otros, por eso no puedo ponerle las 5.
Aún así, no dejo de recomendarla, es única.

Mi libro 100 del año!!!!!!!3 s Christelle202 Read

Avec une écriture puissante, parfois complexe, Zeruya Shalev s'interroge sur le regard de l'autre : si aujourd'hui un être interprète une action d'une façon, quand est-il pour les personnes qui l'entourent ? Ce qui reste de nos vies donne ainsi un aperçu de ce que peuvent ressentir les différents membres d'une même famille ; de comment un fait en particulier peut être perçu différemment selon la sensibilité de chacun.

Chronique complète : Ce qui reste de nos vies de Zeruya Shalevfiction1 Michal Leon121 4

i enjoyed it while i read it. But it left no sediments. I barely recall now, a month after finishing it, what it is about. Competently written, it kept me engaged. But not a great read. Not a book that you come out of with something new. 2 s Introverticheart247 202

Nuda, nuda, nuda.
Zm?czy?em si? literatura-izraelska owned2 s Mihaela Iurea5

Minunat?!2 s Fri41 6

farkl? kültürlere dair gündelik hayat bilgisi edinebilmek için roman, öykü okumay? çok seviyorum. bu kitab? da indirimde görüp israil'de geçiyor diye alm??t?m. daha önce kahramanlar?n?n tamam? bu kadar ay?l?p bay?lan, dünyas? aral?ks?z ba??na y?k?lan?n? görmemi?tim. gerçekten orta do?uya doyurdu yazar sa?olsun :)1 DavidAuthor 3 books62

Read my review in New York Journal of Books first. Additional remarks that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.

Israeli books: Zeruya Shalev's 5th novel views family through a Freudian lens

Israeli author Zeruya Shalev's fifth novel The Remains of Love, published yesterday by Bloomsbury, departs from the first person narration of her previous fiction in favor of a third person narrator whose attention alternates between three protagonists. Ms. Shalev's novels are known for their raw emotion (I strongly recommend her previous novel Thera, but only to emotionally stable readers). In my New York Journal of Books review of The Remains of Love I note that "by shifting between the characters the emotion is diffused and less intense" than Thera, though it is still "emotionally powerful," and I recommend the new novel "to readers who enjoy psychological fiction about family dynamics written in dense prose."

Of the book's three protagonists Dina most closely resembles her author, both of whom were born on kibbutzim, moved with their families to urban areas as children, and as adults married and became mothers of only children. Ms. Shalev's left-wing politics are represented by Dina's brother Avner, a human rights lawyer.

Her characters have solipsistic perspectives, but that should not reflect badly on their author. In 2004 while walking in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood after dropping her child off at kindergarten a passing bus was blown up by a suicide bomber resulting in injuries to Ms. Shalev from which it took four months to recover. After such a trauma a person of weaker character might have become politically neoconservative, but if Avner is any indication it appears Ms. Shalev stands by her progressive principles,

One aspect of Jerusalem life not reflected in her fiction is the extent to which her secular characters have become an ever smaller and isolated minority within that increasingly Orthodox city. It would not be surprising if characters in her future novels will have moved to the western suburbs such as Mivaseret Zion.dense-prose foreign-literature-in-translation hebrew-literature ...more1 J. SimonsAuthor 12 books29

My goodness - what an astonishing yet emotional draining novel this was.

As Hemda lies dying in her tiny Jerusalem apartment, memories of her childhood spent on a collective settlement (kibbutz) come flooding back to her. She is particularly haunted by images of the lake the kibbutz members drained in what turned out to be a failed agricultural experiment. Also returning to her bedside are her daughter Dina and her son Avner.

Dina, now in her mid-forties, lost one of her twins during pregnancy, and becomes obsessed with adopting a boy to replace her unborn son. Avner, a civil rights lawyer for an increasing number of failed cases on behalf of the Bedouin, has his own obsession –tracing a woman he only saw briefly at a hospital bedside yet somehow this encounter affected him profoundly. These two quests, as well as the children’s confrontation with their mother’s impending death, symbolise the yearning for the ‘remains of love’.

This is an outstanding novel, so brutally honest in its portrayal of human relationships whether they be between husband and wife, brother and sister, mother and child. It is not a particularly joyous book, except in its redeeming climax, but as an examination of the human soul, Shalev takes the reader on a remarkable journey.

A word of praise must also go to the translator, Philip Simpson. Modern Hebrew is not a language full of nuance yet his translation remains natural and fluent throughout.

Reviewed for the Book Trust. October 2013


1 Beth Peninger1,583 2

I abandoned the book at page 68. I didn't want to but it was so slow going and tedious to read that I gave up in light of all the other books I have to read this month. Originally written in Hebrew, it was translated into English. I'm wondering if this is part of the slow read. It all made sense, as far as I can tell the translation was accurate but Shalev is a prolific author. She is very descriptive, employing beautiful imagery. She is very wordy as well, and this may have worked against her in this novel. Her introduction of characters and their development was very slow going and confusing at times. There wasn't always a clear delineation for which character was currently being featured. I generally can follow a character driven story line but this one was tough to follow, it seemed to be one long run on sentence even though grammar was used. It didn't move at a pace that kept me engaged or even interested. I was bored by the characters and the story and wondering when, and if, it ever picked up and became interesting. A quick flip through portions of the book through to the end indicated the pace of the book never changed and the story remained tedious and wordy. I couldn't finish it out. dnf1 Michèle Rankl sherpa80 4

Que devient un rêve ajourné? Peut-on le sacrifier? Et au nom de quelle réalité? C'est l'heure des bilans pour les Horowitch. Hemda est en fin de vie et dérive vers les souvenirs de « son lac », refuge de petite fille rêveuse contrariée par les exigences collectivistes du kibboutz où elle a grandi. Dina, son aînée qu'elle n'a pas su aimer, et Avner, son fils adoré, se retrouvent à son chevet, leurs rivalités d'enfance encore à vif malgré la cinquantaine qui approche. Un roman intime et lucide, qui met en lumière la nécessité d'affirmer et de construire maintenant ce qui restera de nos vies.favorites1 Sabbath6 1 follower

“î?i petreci toat? via?a luptând, temându-te, zb?tându-te, regretând, f?când promisiuni, pentru ca în cele din urm? lucrurile s? se întâmple accidental, f?r? a fi gândite ?i pl?nuite dinainte, iar asta e cât se poate de natural ?i m?runt, cât de m?runte sunt toate la o privire atent?, probabil c? ?i moartea îns??i vine la fel, ivindu-se sub înf??i?area unui pitic dup? ce toat? via?a ne-am temut de venirea marelui nostru du?man.” pag. 3451 Sandrine66

Hard to make a lively novel with all characters in despair. I was often bored with the descriptions and repetitions. Talented writer but not the kind of story or, type of writing I enjoy. Too sad and depressing. Glad I am finished with this book. z-middle-east1 Line5 4

It took me a while to get into this book. It's a difficult and confusing read but it built and built and it might be one of the best books I've read.1 Rachel1,118 47

Life's big questions are pondered in this big, stream-of-consciousness novel, translated by Philip Simpson.

In near-modern day, elderly Hemda Horowitz is dying in Jerusalem. She thinks back on her life--her rough upbringing by an authoritarian father on one Israel's fledgling kibbutzim, and her marriage to a haunted European immigrant--and how this affected her relationship with her children. She coddled her son Avner, who is now corpulent and dedicating an exhausting life to being a public defender to Bedouin and embattled Palestinians. She distanced herself from her formerly bulimic, rail-thin daughter Dina. Neither of the middle aged children are doing so well in the present.

This is really more their story than it is Hemda's. I'd say that the majority of the plot goes to Dina's quest to adopt. On the sidelines are her remote husband and daughter, unsympathetic colleagues, midlife crisis personified by her obsession with a woman who took her own life, and etc. But the adoption angst gets the most pages.

Avner's story is a little less focused. Most dramatically, he tracks down a woman he saw feel genuine emotions towards a lover who shared a hospital space with Hemda. He's in a loveless marriage, see, perhaps formed when he was too young for the relationship. But I think the more moving (and probably more believable) part is his relationship with his job as public defender, and more implicitly his relationship to Israel and its systematic biases.

The stream of consciousness writing style will not be for everyone. Shalev (presumably--as implied above I read the English translation) writes long, drawn out paragraphs meant to denote the action from inside of Hemda's, Dina's, and Avner's heads. The pacing can be confusing sometimes because there's no external chronological dictation.

I've seen complaints that there's no character development but I'd disagree. It's just that Shalev is interested in smaller, more insular moments about what it is to be human. At all times, her protagonists are conveying/thinking about complex realities--webs of relationships and personal desires, past and present. It was a long read for me but a compelling one. And I'm especially grateful that Shalev didn't leave out a broader world to which the characters react. Yes, there are universal themes about the desire for love and life purpose. But there's also service given to the particular--to Israeli politics and Jewish history.

That being said, I can't decide whether I think the ending is very moving or relatively pat! Shalev sets up a foreshadowing style for how these characters experience life and death. She's also perhaps a touch too focused on redemption arcs for my taste. But overall I really have no complaints. These characters and this world drew me in, as a complex rendering of reality.jewish-fiction Richard709 9

I came across the title and a description of this book via some of my other reading of Israeli fiction. As I novels about family relations and it was readily available at a local public library I decided to read it.

Overall, I would say that it is a challenging book to read. First, the nature of the relationships described are deeply troubled and mostly quite depressing. I was not but some readers might be put off by this. Second, and more importantly for me, the prose is difficult to read. Very dense, extremely long sentences filled with complex clauses and phrases describing events, places, and/or people's conflicting thoughts and feelings make it a tough slough. Some of these sentences take up as much as 20-25 lines of text! I was tempted to give up it all up after about 100 pages when I began to feel as if the characters were not being developed sufficiently to hold my interest. Fortunately, they began to come more alive and I somehow adapted to the prose to keep reading.

To her credit, Shalev is able to depict complex and deep, ambivalent human emotions in a very powerful way. But it took a lot of persistence and patience on my part to get to what is a worthwhile story. It was heartening to see Mother, daughter, and son achieve some reconciliation between them and for the son and daughter in their marriages. Without giving it away, one might criticize the 'solution' the daughter found as a bit too formulaic.

Some critics have apparently noted that Shalev did not make the state of Israeli society or Israeli-Palestinian conflict a part of the story. In interviews she has given about the book she noted that this was not her purpose in writing the book. Careful reading, however, will find that she did insert some observations about life on a kibbutz and Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens and Bedouins. The son in the story is actually a lawyer representing the latter in their efforts to overcome arbitrary and at times illegal actions by the government against these folks.

With her dense prose I am not sure I want to read another one of Shalev's books. If I do, I will be better prepared than I was for this one. Given its psychological insightfulness and good, albeit slow, character development I would maybe rate it a 3.5. fiction israel-related Laurel Deloria1,071 1 follower

Abolutely Marvelous, amazing book. complex thoughts, unpredictable, hard beautiful sentences. It took me 4 days to read this book, 3 more than normal, but it required a Sarmago-style concentration with page long paragraphs. But stick with it. Its worth every minute.
Hemda Horovitz is nearing the end of her life. As she lies in bed in Jerusalem, memories from the past flood her thoughts: her childhood in the kibbutz spent under the gaze of her stern, pioneer father; the lake that was her only solace; and her own two children-one she could never love enough, and the other whom she loved too much.

Avner, the beloved child, has grown up to be a heavy, anguished man, disillusioned by his work and trapped in a loveless marriage. When visiting his mother in the hospital, he witnesses a devoted couple's final moments together; after the man's death Avner becomes obsessed with finding the woman, and a strange and delicate relationship unfolds.

Dina, Hemda's daughter, has put aside her career in order to give her teenage daughter, Nitzan, the warmth she never received from her own mother. But Nitzan is withdrawing from her, and Dina is overcome by a longing to adopt another child-a longing that, if fulfilled, may destroy her fragile family.

Zeruya Shalev's electrifying new novel is at once a meditation on the state of modern Israel and a profound exploration of family, yearning, compromise, and the insistent pull of the past. Celia22

Ce qui reste de nos vies, by Zeruya Shalev, which I read in this French translation held my rapt attention throughout. I was overwhelmed by the portrayal of Hemda, Avner and Dinas' journey towards realising their goals, struggling to free themselves from family pressure or habit to allow their deepest desires to become reality. The third party narration, by the 3 protagonists, was alternately moving and humorous, in particular the dialogue between husband and wife, Avner and Salomé often had me in fits of laughter. The complexity of family relations and the difficulty of breaking out of these to achieve personal aims was expressed in moving detail. The end of the book had me sobbing and was completely satisfying. This book was an incredible read, showing the characters being confronted with and then facing up to insatisfaction in their personal lives and persevering against their preconceptions in order to fulfil their dreams. Christine Bonheure647 246

Waarschuwing, dit is geen gemakkelijke kost. De zinnen zijn zonder uitzondering lang, bestaan uit ontzettend veel komma’s en meanderen voortdurend mee met wie nu weer aan het woord of aan het denken is. Er zijn drie hoofdpersonages – Dina, haar broer en haar moeder die op sterven ligt. En dan zijn er nog de vele bijfiguren zoals echtgenoten en dochters. Het verhaal springt van het heden naar het verleden, en van personage naar personage, soms zonder overgang. Dan kom je opeens tot de constatatie dat je je in een ander tijdperk bevindt en dat het verhaal is opgeschoven naar de jeugd van alweer een ander iemand. Ik heb echt moeten wennen aan die chaotische manier van vertellen, maar ben blij te hebben doorgezet want dit boek zindert na. Het verhaal en hoe de mensen met elkaar omgaan, en welk effect dat heeft op vooral opgroeiende wezens, intrigeert enorm. 5 s Martinez Claudio110 8

A staggering description of a marriage's wreckage. The author posseses astonishing skills all the more if the original is in Hebrew and it is still felt in other languages i.e. Spanish, German, whatever.

The sinking of a marriage is tough. She digs into it without contemplations. More and more. Against the grain of contemporary culture which takes for granted that a marriage's sinking is having a glass of wine or sex with a stranger. Pure choice. Simple banality.

It is not . It hurts. Sometimes it is unbearable to read. Because the book is able to read us.

The metaphors are of another world. Sometimes. Literature at it's highest.

But do not look for hope into the book. That's the Achylles heel of the book. No aim. No goals. Random pain. No way out. Jujupe48

Pas fini.
En soit, l'histoire n'est pas mauvaise, je n'ai rien contre ce genre de tranche de vie avec les personnages qui se remettent en question et l'arrangement des mots est vraiment sympa mais :
_ C'est juste trop long, j'ai lu 200 pages environ et il se passe vraiment pas grand chose.
_ Le changement de pov est parfois maladroit et ça prend plusieurs paragraphes pour comprendre quel personnage on suit.
_ L'autrice utilise souvent des procédés comme la métaphore ou le flashback dans lequel on se perd parfois.
_Les phrases beaucoup trop long, parfois un paragraphe entier, donc presque une page entière, c'est trop, faut mettre des points a un moment.

Bref une lecture trop fastidieuse à mon sens. Ale Sandoval Tress864 21

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