Falling Out of Time
*Starred Review* With a strange and wonderful tale, Grossman challenges the boundaries separating life from death, sanity from madness. Announcing I have to go, a grief-stricken Israeli villager takes leave of his bewildered wife, embarking on a journey to there—an impossibly undefined place where he hopes to find and to speak with his dead son. As he sets out walking, in ever-widening circles around his village, the Walking Man becomes a Pied Piper of Bereavement, drawing behind him the Midwife, the Net-Mender, the Elderly Math Teacher, the Duke—all staggering under loads of sadness due to the loss of a loved one. Even the Town Chronicler—who narrates the bizarre quest—joins his distraught wife in the company following the Walking Man into a dreamscape where the deepest fears stirred by death collide with the most passionate hopes for life. Together these grim marchers unfold a dark colloquy—by turns heartrending and comforting—on what it means to love the departed, what it means to accept—or defy—death. Intensifying the pathos, deepening the soul-searching, husbands and wives repeatedly struggle to preserve their union despite sharply contrasting ways of dealing with their shared loss. A potent fusion of poetry, fiction, and drama sweeps readers into very deep waters! --Bryce Christensen