FUNERAL AT NOON

A first English translation of a subdued and haunting story of Israeli village life, originally published in Hebrew in 1974, that combines elements of Willa Cather's A Lost Lady and L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, with hints of Albert Camus and Paul Bowles to produce a devastating impression of waste and loss. A funeral, early in the novel, establishes a mournful tone that never dissipates (and never relaxes its grip on the reader) and that deftly suggests a premature end to things, a darkness that descends too soon. The aftermath of that funeral resonates with images of heat and exhaustion, with suggestions of failed communication, and with a sense of the nearby presence of vaguely threatening dangers. These elements join to create an atmosphere of depression that encompasses Koren's protagonist, the young housewife Hagar Erlich. Indifferent to her busy husband Tuvia, and unable to stir herself to complete the requirements for her teacher's certificate or to find some other fulfillment, Hagar drifts into an almost maternal relationship with a ten-year-old boy, Yiftach, entrusted to her care. During walks with Yiftach outside their village to a former Arab settlement (now used as a military training facility), Hagar abandons herself to the consequences of her meeting with a solitary, taciturn soldier—and passively endures the linked catastrophes that overtake her marriage to Tuvia, their neighbors, and the naively trusting boy. The story's a simple one, and Koren conveys its exceptional portraits of wasted lives with rigorous understatement. But its characterizations are deep and weighted with implied emotion. Koren intensifies our understanding of his damaged people through several interpolated extended flashbacks, such as the story of Yiftach's mother's unhappy youth and continuing bad luck with men, and the revelation of Tuvia's history of submissiveness and disappointment- -a history that leaves him helpless in the face of Hagar's unhappiness and unfaithfulness. A minor masterpiece, and one of the best novels out of Israel in recent memory.