{"id":2206,"date":"2016-10-30T22:32:39","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T17:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fableandi.com\/?p=2206"},"modified":"2020-04-04T20:13:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T14:43:17","slug":"book-review-scenes-from-village-life-by-amos-oz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebooksatchel.com\/book-review-scenes-from-village-life-by-amos-oz\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review : Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz"},"content":{"rendered":"
In a quiet corner of Israel is the village of Tel Ilan. Each villager has a story to tell. An old man keeps hearing digging noises at night. A 17 year old falls in love with a thirty year old divorcee. An aunt waits for her nephew to arrive from Tel Aviv. A boy shoots himself underneath the bed of his parents and they sleep through the night unaware of the fact.<\/p>\n
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My first encounter with Amos Oz was in a short story that was published in The New Yorker My Curls Have Blown All the Way to China<\/em>. To admit the truth, Scenes from Village Life<\/em> attracted me because of its cover. The cover somehow gave an illusion of being a serene novel, the one that you would love to relax with. But as I finished the last pages, I could feel a churning of uneasiness in my heart.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The book is a collection of short stories that talk of the different inhabitants of the village of Tel Ilan. The stories function well as stand-alones. Save for the fact that characters occasionally get a mention in the other stories, there is no connection between them, so you can read in any order.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To those who are not familiar with Amos Oz’s style of writing, his stories echo silence and quietness. He has an eye for details which is another aspect I loved in this collection. He pays attention to the minute details which makes the scene he is describing come alive in your head. Tel Ilan is a village, more of a small-town, away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It is the kind you would want to go to to escape from the mundane requirements of a city life. However the theme of loneliness casts its shadow in different forms in all the stories. The stories have no revelations at the end and some do not have a definitive ending either. This is a good book to read for those who crave descriptive passages told in quiet prose with occasional disclosures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n