Be My Knife: A Novel - Softcover

Grossman, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312421478 ISBN 13: 9780312421472

Publisher: Picador, 2003

Synopsis

The international bestseller Be My Knife is a compelling love story from David Grossman, the leading Israeli novelist of his generation

"We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum, and at long last have to tell it--the truth. I want to be able to say to myself, 'I bled truth with her,' yes, that's what I want. Be a knife for me, and I, I swear, will be a knife for you."

An awkward, neurotic seller of rare books writes a desperate letter to a beautiful stranger whom he sees at a class reunion. This simple, lonely attempt at seduction begins a love affair of words between Yair and Miriam, two married, middle-aged adults, dissatisfied with their lives, yearning for the connection that has always eluded them--and, eventually, reawakened to feelings that they thought had passed them by. Their correspondence unfolds into an exchange of their most naked confessions: of desire, childhood tragedies, joys, and humiliations.

Through the dialogue between Yair--a family man and surprisingly successful adulterer, whose complex, guarded letters reveal a life of secrets kept from the people closest to him--and Miriam, at first deceptively open and warm, who fills her life with distraction to avoid a past full of painful secrets, Be My Knife explores the nature and the limits of intimacy.

A deep departure from David Grossman's previous work, Be My Knife is his subtlest, most passionate novel yet.

About this title

About the Author

David Grossman has received several international awards for his writing, including the Premio Grinzane and the Premio Mondelo for The Zigzag Kid. He is the author of several novels, including A Horse Walks into a Bar, The Book of Intimate Grammar, as well as children's books, and a play. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children.

Reviews

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

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312421478
• ISBN 13: 9780312421472
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320