Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #905501 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
Be My Knife, by the highly acclaimed Israeli novelist David Grossman, explores the perennial dilemma of unrequited love. Grossman, however, is far too original a novelist not to give his story a twist. The book opens with a letter written by Yair Einhorn, a neurotic, compulsive rare-books dealer, to Miriam, a beautiful, mysterious woman he glimpses "at the class reunion a few days ago--but you didn't see me." Her offhand gesture and brief, enigmatic smile prompts him to send her a passionate letter, what he calls a "restrained suicide note." To his joy and amazement, she writes back to him. So begins an extraordinary love affair by letter, recounted for the first 200 pages by Yair's impulsive, impassioned, and angst-ridden letters to Miriam. When Miriam finally finds her own voice toward the end of the book, Yair has raised the reader's expectations so high that ultimately her character is rather disappointing. Be My Knife is a novelist's novel about obsession, compulsion, and desire. The writing is dense, demanding, and full of moments of great poetry and inventiveness, but it can become difficult and obscure. Stylistically Grossman is experimenting with plot and character in the grand modernist tradition, and Yair is reminiscent of the tormented "little men" in the works of Joyce and Beckett. However, at times Grossman's brilliant artfulness overwhelms a potentially fascinating story. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal
Another original premise from Israeli novelist/journalist Grossman: after a shy, middle-aged man notices a beautiful stranger at a reunion, they launch a passionate affair of words.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
When a thirty-three-year-old man named Yair catches a glimpse of Miriam at a class reunion, he senses a bond with her that goes beyond sexual attraction; because he is a practiced philanderer who is in search of something extraordinary, he implores her to enter a ruthlessly honest correspondence with him, on the understanding that they will never meet. "Even a voice is too real for the hallucination I want to have," he tells her. Most of the book is devoted to Yair's letters, and so we don't get to hear Miriam's responses until near the end. But it is Grossman's achievement that we understand from the start that Yair's vision of Miriam (and thus ours) is almost painfully incomplete. This is the divide Yair wants to cut through, and yet, Grossman suggests, this divide is what endures.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

a "high resolution" book
I read the book in hebrew, not the English translation, so you may take my review with its limitations. I think this is a touching, extremely accurate (high resolution) book about a man and a woman, getting to know each other intimately without meeting. the book is about peeling off your layers of layers of dishonesty, your masks, and touching the essence of 'you' and 'I'. It is written in a rich langauge, with lots of little stories, ideas, imagery. I find it amazing that the author can write in completely different 'voices' when writing the man and when writing the woman. I think this book is above all an "experience" - you don't read it without you yourself exposing some bits of your true self to your self as you read.

Did I say, brilliant?
This is a story of roaring emotion. Why this, and why that, and what if, and what if not. Introspection ad nauseam - examination of the emotional self, that to my mind leads nowhere; but who am I to judge? Oh, yes, I loved the writing. If I am any judge it is brilliant and innovative.
So, I may not agree with the hero and heroin's emotional excesses but David Grossman creates a few emotions in us along the way as we read. Frustration, annoyance, disgust and deep involvement are just a few of the feelings that I experienced while reading this most unusual novel.
Yes, I found the characters annoying but believable and there was always a thread that kept me hanging in there, wanting to know where it would all lead. And without giving anything way, I was emotionally breathless when I finally put this book down in the early hours of the morning. Did I say brilliant?

READ THIS BOOK
This book is a treasure, a rare gem, a unique and wonderful story of two people, Miriam and Yair and the potential of overcoming limitation and stagnation through the simple act of communication. Miriam's evolved compassionate form of love shines through to the very end. Yair's frenetic neurotic passionate energy lights the way out of the darkness. READ THIS BOOK.