|
Outstanding
|
Chicago Tribune Steven G. Kellman
A powerful portrait of coming of age amid conflict, loss and independence.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Daily Telegraph John Gross
It's a long book, and if it weren't as good as it is you could easily find yourself resenting its length. But you don't. It is moving, amusing, thought-provoking, brilliantly evocative. You're caught up in it from the start and swept along.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Kirkus Reviews
A moving, emotionally charged memoir of the renowned author's youth in a newly created Israel.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Los Angeles Times Amy Wilentz
Oz inspects, ridicules and exposes himself at every opportunity, and yet he remains lovable, a trick that is an integral part of this writer's magic. We are in the hands here of a capable, practiced seducer.[21 Nov 2004, p.R5]
|
|
Outstanding
|
New York Review Of Books Amos Elon
Oz powerfully evokes the sounds and sights of the 1940s but we hear none of the cliches about heroic young men and women, silent, thoughtful, and self-disciplined, fighting for independence and making the desert bloom in remote outposts.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Publishers Weekly
This is a powerful, nimbly constructed saga of a man, a family and a nation forged in the crucible of a difficult, painful history.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Booklist Donna Seaman
For all its acute anecdotal and philosophical parsing of the larger world, this generous, gracefully meandering, many voiced, eventful, gently funny, and often magical reminiscence revolves most around Oz's mother and her tragic death.[15 Oct 2004, p.378]
|
|
Outstanding
|
The Guardian Linda Grant
It is one of the funniest, most tragic and most touching books I have ever read.
|
|
Outstanding
|
The Independent Justin Cartwright
It is one of the most gripping, intense and moving autobiographies I have ever read, seamlessly translated by Nicholas de Lange.
|
|
Outstanding
|
The New York Times Book Review John Leonard
Chekhov is all over A Tale of Love and Darkness -- rendered from Hebrew into supple, acrobatic English by Oz's longtime translator, Nicholas de Lange -- waiting for Kafka to mug him. And mug him Kafka will, even in this glorious, masterly lamentation, these ''Speak, Memory!'' Dead Sea Scrolls.
|
|
Outstanding
|
The Spectator Diana Hendry
Marvelous... Perhaps with A Tale of Love and Darkness Oz has become a metaphorical fireman, rescuing both his parents if not from fire, then from the darkness of oblivion. Without a doubt, Oz 'calls up the dead and shakes up the living.' Read him.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Washington Post Alberto Manguel
An extraordinary, luminous, wise and important book.
|
|
Outstanding
|
The New Republic Robert Alter
One of the most enchanting and deeply satisfying books that I have read in many years.
|
|
Favorable
|
The Independent David Cesarani
Mesmerizing...But fans of his novels, with their lean prose, may find this hard going. The writing is dense, repetitive, almost liturgical.
|
|
Favorable
|
Boston Globe Richard Eder
It is a painful story, yet transformed, even lightened, by a novelist's ability to get closer while standing back. There is much that is both comic and very human about the contrast between the father's logomanic distances and his disastrously bungling tenderness.
|
|
Favorable
|
Daily Telegraph David Isaacson
But where those writers' family sagas were rich, satirical affairs, Oz assumes a sober, objective perspective.
|
|
Favorable
|
Library Journal Joyce Sparrow
As much as this distinguished book details the lives of the Oz family, it also captures the history of Israel. [Aug 2004, p.80]
|
