´I´m not in Gaza, I´m in Tel Aviv, and there are no shells here, only a dying dog, and no one is helping, no one comes´.
A short and intellectually sharp novel set in Tel Aviv, Dog by Yishay Ishi Ron, brilliantly translated into English by Yardenne Greenspan is emotionally powerful and dramatically realistic. It is a very well constructed story, that doesn´t dramatize, but inserts the elements of drama into the characters in a seamless way.
Nicknamed Geller - the magician able to bend a spoon with the power of his mind, the main character was wounded during the Operation Pillar of Defense, suffering of severe, untreated PTSD. (The author himself is a survivor of severe PTSD). ´Everyone was so proud of me. They say I´m a hero, but I didn´t feel like one´. Now, he is a heroine-addict, living with other addicts in Tel Aviv. He is befriended - against his will, but he doesn´t have any will anyway ´So I seem friendly to you? (...) I´m a heroin addict. I need drugs, no friends´. - by a woman who lost her son many years ago, living alone with a dog.
There are short dialogues and short scenes succeeding, sometimes similar with traumatic episodes, only that for Geller - who is only later on named with his real name, Barak, when he is arrested for a framed murder - those episodes are now more than isolated flashes; his whole ife is a long endless traumatic flash.
Depictions are realistic, as well as the life-like setting. It ends - after a crime-story intermezzo - with no promise, but it as the end of a sequence. The end of a tragic story beautifully told.
For me, it was the best Jewish/Israeli-related read of the year so far.
