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The seven years between the birth of Etgar Keret's son and the death of his father were good years, though still full of reasons to worry. Lev is born in the midst of a terrorist attack. Etgar's father gets cancer. The threat of constant war looms over their home and permeates daily life.
What emerges from this dark reality is a series of sublimely absurd ruminations on everything from Etgar's three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mind-set behind Angry Birds. There's Lev's insistence that he is a cat, releasing him from any human responsibilities or rules. Etgar's siblings, all very different people who have chosen radically divergent paths in life, come together after his father's shivah to experience the grief and love that tie a family together forever. This wise, witty memoir - Etgar's first nonfiction book published in America, and told in his inimitable style - is full of wonder and life and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humor.
"Starred Review. Without overplaying any single aspect of a complicated life in complicated times in a complicated place, Keret's lovely memoir retains its essential human warmth, demonstrating that with memoirs, less can often be more." - Publishers Weekly
"Gentle reflections on love, family, and heritage." - Kirkus
This information about The Seven Good Years was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Etgar Keret was born in Tel Aviv in 1967. He is a recipient of the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the author, most recently, of the story collection Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among many other publications, and on "This American Life," where he is a regular contributor.
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