Husband and Wife: A Novel
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Zeruya Shalev achieved international literary stardom with her novel Love Life, which The Washington Post Book World called “a brutally honest and often brilliant tour of individual and family psychology.” In Husband and Wife, she takes us into the heartbreak and compromise of a diseased marriage that may or may not be capable of healing.
Na’ama and Udi Newman, together with their young daughter Noga, lead a quiet domestic life. But their idyll abruptly ends when Udi—a perfectly healthy man—wakes up one morning unable to move his legs. The doctors can find no physical explanation for his paralysis. It appears to be a symptom, not of illness, but of something far more insidious. This mysterious disruption soon reveals a vicious cycle of jealousy, paranoia, resentment, and accumulated injuries that now threaten to tear their small family apart.
In a rush of hallucinogenic imagery, Husband and Wife captures the vulnerability and deceptive comforts of lives intertwined, offering “an acutely intimate portrait of a relationship” (Donna Rifkind, The Baltimore Sun).
“Nearly impossible to look away from.” —Elle
Zeruya Shalev
Zeruya Shalev was born at Kibbutz Kinneret. She is the author of three previous novels; Love Life, Husband and Wife and Thera, a book of poetry and a children's book. Her work is critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling. Shalev has been awarded the Book Publishers Association's Gold and Platinum Prizes four times, the Corine International Book Prize (Germany, 2001), the Amphi Award (France, 2003), the ACUM Prize twice (1997, 2005), the French Wizo Prize (2007), the prestigious Welt-Literature Award (2012) and The Remains of Love is a finalist of the Bottary Lattes Grinzane Prize (Italy, 2013). Husband and Wife was also nominated for the Prix Femina Prize (France, 2002). A feature film of Love Life, produced in Germany, was released in 2008. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages. She lives in Jerusalem.
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Reviews for Husband and Wife
38 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A very passionate book about marriage problems and complex relationships between people. The author goes deep into the inner self of each character to show us that nobody is perfect, that every single decision we make in our life can have both a positive and a negative impact on us and people around us. I would say this is an anti-love story written in such a powerful and strong language that makes one question one's own marriage and existence.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What is the essence of a marriage? Or of parenthood? In this beautiful novel, Na’ama Newman expresses what it feels like to sense the impending dissolution of one’s own marriage. As a manifestation of marital difficulties, Na’ama’s husband Udi experiences paralysis which is diagnosed as “conversion” or physical symptoms with a psychological basis. In desperate attempts to avoid psychiatric care for Udi, the couple first takes a short trip and later invites Zohara, a Tibetan spiritual guide, to work her craft on them. The solutions, it turns out, cause as much harm as they do good. Complicating matters, their having a 10-year-old daughter who is ostracized by her peers is an additional stress for the couple. Na’ama, always the controller, sabotages any effort on Udi’s part to become closer to his daughter. Although the writing is lyrical and flowing, the sentences run on and on in a style which may not be to everyone’s liking. The narrative is written this way purposely to fuel the reader’s imagination with Na’ama’s innermost thoughts and concerns. What evolves from this is a detailed story of how one woman learns to be true to herself and discover her role in relation to the other important people in her life.