Rating: WORTHY!
After someone whose reviews I follow mentioned this, I requested it from the library thinking initially that it was a woman's account of being in the IDF, but while the author has indeed been in the IDF, this is a fictional work about three other women in the IDF. As such, I'm sure that it does contain biographical elements, but it is not a biography. That clarified, I found it an eminently worthy read. It was fascinating, funny a hell in parts, and engrossing. A couple of pieces fell completely flat for me, and the penultimate chapter was completely bizarre, but overall I loved it. The closest thing I've read to this was Joseph Heller's Catch-22 which I favorably reviewed back in February 2014. If you liked that, you'll probably like this, and vice-worsted.
This fictional work follows three Israeli women (Avishag, Lea, and Yael) from their last months in high school in an isolated north Israel village, to enlistment the Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisra'el (known in the west as the IDF or Israeli Defence Force), and beyond. It's written by a Harvard graduate who grew up in Israel in a location similar to the one where the novel begins. All Israelis, male or female, are required to enlist at age eighteen, for two years. There is no distinction between genders. That's what makes the IDF so amazing. The rest of the world is scrambling to catch up to this obviously optimal state of affairs.
The story isn't exactly linear, nor does it follow the usual story flow. Normally this would annoy me, but once in a while it works, and it works here. I lived in Israel for a short period of time (a while ago!), and this story came across as authentic through and through. The layout is a series of slightly disconnected vignettes or impressions - almost still life's - of these three girls as they travel through the next two or three years, and it is by turns disturbing, frightening, saddening, hilarious, and heart-warming. The way the story is laid out makes the reader feel disconnected, too, and makes nonsensical stories make sense in this context. It also serves to give the reader a good idea of what it's like to live in a nation which feels itself constantly at war even when no overt war is going on.
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For me, Lea was the most fascinating character, especially after her experience with a man who slashed the throat of her fellow guard on the border-guard duty they were engaged in. How Lea reacts to this - the slow burn she undergoes - is disturbing and deeply unnerving. Avishag is the most amusing character. Her entire life seems almost like a Monty Python sketch and her name seems particularly à propos. At one point she completely loses it while on guard duty in a tower across from the Egyptian border. They are so bored with nothing happening day after day after day that when she takes off all of her clothes and lays down in a fetal position on the floor of her tower, the Egyptians don't even notice for some time.
Eventually one of the Egyptians is so bored that he decides to actually do his job as a break from the monotony, and when he aims his binocs at the Israeli side, there are two female border guards lying naked on the floor of their watch tower. The Egyptians think it's some sort of trick or insult, and a report travels up the Egyptian chain of command to the top, crosses the border, and travels down the Israeli chain of command. The girls get eight weeks in the brig for being improperly dressed on duty or something. Yael, for me wasn't quite so interesting, and some of the snapshots in general were boring to me, but overall, the novel was quite stunning and I fully recommend it.
