Yolanda is a retired Tel Aviv school teacher who has broken her leg and ends up in a rehab facility for nearly a year. This novel is the story of her stay in rehab, a closed society with a group of individuals in various states of illness, as well as some sharply drawn staff members. (One of the blurbs compares the book to The Magic Mountain in this similarity of subject matter.) The staff includes the head nurse, named "Satana" by Yolanda, after she believes Satana tried to murder her early in her stay in the facility by pushing her wheelchair down a steep garden path where it overturned. The young tech/aide Leon, is a gigolo of sorts, and is constantly hitting on Yolanda. We get to know Yolanda's roomates, as well as a handsome artist from the male ward she develops a friendship with.

The book often seems a comedy (and I can't help but wonder how accurate its depiction of the Israeli health care system is--some of it seems pretty surreal). But I think in actuality it's a pretty grim depiction of old age and loneliness hiding behind the humor.

First line: "From the side entrance, Mrs. Moscowitz could see a lawn and standing in the middle of it a lofty, broad-boughed tree with big dark green leaves.

Last line: "Like glittering eyes they shone above her like pure eternally young eyes, contemplating themselves in an infinitude of love, and redeeming nothing with their gaze."

3 1/2 stars

Somehow this review seems inadequate to me. I liked the book a lot. I was attracted to it by the blurbs on the dust cover from authors I respect, which included these (they were longer, these are excerpts):

Philip Roth compares Kenaz to Malamud and Appelfeld
Amos Oz--"a masterpiece"
A. B. Yehoshua--a small subject--a sick old woman--but a drama of emotional depth, "one of the best books I have read in the past decade. ( )

Yolanda Moskowitz is a 76-year-old woman who ended up in a Tel Aviv rehab hospital after a debilitating fall. Her story is not only an amazing story of aging and that of a crotchety old woman, but it is also a glimpse of paranoia and the chance to stare uncertainty straight in the eye. Among the many colorful characters in this book (the artist Lazar Kagan, the nurse Satana, the masseuse Adela, the demented patient Paula), the reader gets to experience the drama of aging and becoming incapacitated. It’s a rough road.

Again I’ve fallen in love with the way Yehoshua Kenaz writes. He has the ability to dissect people to see things within themselves that perhaps even they cannot see. This is a book of humor, but not the hilarious kind. It's the gentle sad humor that comes with knowing that life is not perfect and the years are spinning by.

I especially love the translation from Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. The words of the novel are not complicated. Some of the sentences are translated literally from Hebrew, making me want to hold onto this book and perhaps, someday in the future, try to read it again in its original language. It will be a delight to read this book again at any time. ( )