Review: A beautifully told story with ancient echoes
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 12, 2013
The three narrators of FAMILY SECRETS are all the same person: Avram Sheckter at different ages.  Each section is written in his voice at that age.  The book begins in 1936 when, as he sees his best friend A’atef and his friend’s mother, Hoda leaving their home in what was then Palestine.  He doesn’t know why and all Hoda will say is that Avram’s father told them they had to leave.  Avram suspects his own mother was the person demanding their departure.  In many ways, it’s the story of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar, and Ismael.  The longest section of the book, it tells the story of life for Avram, his impoverished family, and the plight of the Yeminites in the land as well as the plight of the Arabs living there.Part Two finds Avram, age seventeen, returning home after three years having left following the death of his mother.  He speaks about what his life has been like in the days leading up to the founding of modern Israel.  A’atef shows up and for some reason Avram is very hostile towards him.Part Three takes place in 2004.  The country has changed and so has he.  He also learns the family secret.Throughout the book Dorit Silverman  presents the personal and political situations of the people as well as some philosophical perspectives:• “I don’t think that a person should ever be named after his profession.  It doesn’t give him any room to move.”• “When you look up to someone,” Mama answers, “they end up looking down at you.”• When a Yeminite Jew went to the union for money he was owed and needed for medical care, he said “I’ll die if you don’t give me money.”  They told him, “So die.”  “When he died, they went to ask the union for a little money for burial shrouds and the didn’t give.”• An Arab was the watchman in the fields of the Jews.  He would keep guard so no one would steal.  But he took a lot of oranges for all the families in the neighborhood.  He used to say, “The land is ours.”• Avram, short for his age, became an excellent soccer player.  He learned the rules: “If a player sneaks behind the opponent’s defense to make a goal by himself without being part of the attack before then, it’s not fair.  It’s a violation.“If not being part of the team is a crime...then I must be a criminal.”The British let you [a Jew] leave the country.  “Coming back is the problem.  But only for the Jews.  They don’t bother us [the Arabs].”• “I thought that after his bar mitzvah and his wedding, a boy becomes a man, and that’s it, he gets old and stops growing, but I’m amazed every time to discover that I’m only moving to a different stage.”She uses her words with a fresh and beautiful perspective.  Some of my favorite examples are:• “The doctor says her heart is fluttering inside her.  Maybe her heart wants to come out.  “My mother’s heart is like a caged bird.”• “Yephet’s house is like a necklace of rooms, one leading to the other.  All the rooms dance in a circle, and there’s a courtyard in the middle.  At night, you can close that whole necklace with one heavy door.”• “My hopes are like the pink gift ribbons, fluttering in the sky, spreading apart and falling to the ground.”• “Her face is plowed with wrinkles.”• “Some of them have fishermen’s nets around their eyes.”• “Dozens of white notes that were stuck in them fall onto my feet as if it were pouring paper instead of rain.”FAMILY SECRETS tells an interesting, well-formulated story that left me with much to consider.This book was a free Amazon download.