Included on the 2022 International Booker Prize Longlist, More Than I Love My Life (transl. into English by veteran Hebrew to English translator Jessica Cohen)/Was Nina wusste (transl. into German from Hebrew by Anne Birkenhauer) is a multi-generational women story. Vera, originally from Yugoslavia, now in her 90s and at the beginning of Alzheimer´s, is back to the feared Goli Otok Island, the Adriatic Alcatraz where she was imprisoned and tortured for refusing to betray her non-Jewish husband, involved in the anti-Tito resistance. The return is part of a movie, her granddaughter Gili is making about her, and her daughter, Nina, who abandoned Gili when she was 3, is also taking the trip.
The novel is inspired by the story of one of Grossman´s confidante and I felt actually that this story has the emergency of writing down before it is too late, before the story is lost. Therefore, although it is far from being a short read, there are some parts which look like they were either wrote too fast, and therefore, not all the details come along together and the characters may have less depth. In other places, the emotional aspects take over the prose and it is not necessarily in the advantage of the writing.
Nevertheless, there is a certain attraction of the writing, as usual in the case of Grossman´s books, although personally I feel like his last books are somewhere floating on a sea of incertitudes and the characters look like unfinished paintings.
Rating: 3 stars
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