In this edition of Leah’s Book Picks, I review Songs for the Broken-Hearted, a debut novel by Ayelet Tsabari.
You might be familiar with Tsabari’s work – she previously wrote a beautiful memoir a few years ago called, The Art of Leaving. (I made a mistake in my review, it was only published 5 years ago, not 10.)
In The Art of Leaving, Tsabari writes about running away from the people and places she loves in the wake of her father’s death. In losing this key figure in her life, at such a young age, it takes Tsabari years before she finds her way back to an understanding of what home means.
This novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted, starts on a similar vein. The protagonist Zohara originally runs away to live in New York City but returns to Israel after her mother, Saida, dies. Through the process of cleaning up her mother’s home, Zohara learns things about her mother that she missed as a child. Most notably, that she was a singer of traditional Yemeni women’s songs. Zohara begins to understand her mother better while learning about this particular genre of music, which offered women like her mother a singular outlet to express themselves.
A common struggle throughout the novel is that expectation and reality seldom meet. Zohara pines for a mother she never really knew. Her mother pines for a son she believes is still alive. The country tuns out to be not exactly the one the family members bargained for. No one ever gets everything they want but it turns out, they can subsist on what turns out to be just enough.
Watch the full review for more about the book.
*This is the third book I’ve reviewed set in roughly the same time frame of Israel in the 1990s. That was a coincidence but a happy one. I lived in Israel a little while after Rabin’s assassination and believed as many others did, that we were within touching distance of peace. I think about those days a lot, and what could have been. This book, Songs for the Brokenhearted is an elegy to a different path that could have existed in Israel. And maybe, if we are lucky, one day will.*
Do you have a recommendation for a book I should review? Leave it in the comments.
Leah’s (Previous) Picks:
In The Courtyard of the Kabbalist, by Ruchama Feuerman. Buy it here.
Here is Still Here, by Sivan Slapak. Buy it here.
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