Love Life

A Novel

By: Zeruya Shalev

Narrated by: Vanessa Johansson

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as a novel that "broke all the barriers...sexually explicit yet dense with biblical allusions and psychological insight", Love Life unbuttoned Hebrew literature and spent four months as Israel's number-one best seller.

What begins as a story of a young married woman's turbulent affair with an older man rapidly devolves into a feverish, lyrical crash course in the anatomy of obsession. When Yaara meets Aryeh, her father's boyhood friend, she is instantly drawn to his impassive and archly assured presence. It is not long before she forsakes her devoted and well-meaning husband for the powerful, mysterious older man who seems to embody all that she lacks: will, strength, and the key to her parents' inaccessible pasts. They embark on a heated affair that soon spirals toward the destructive as Yaara finds that the things in Aryeh that attract her also repel her with equal intensity.

With shocking immediacy, Shalev lays bare Yaara's struggle to navigate extreme terrain ranging from the sublime to the grotesque, the sacred to the profane, the liberating to the all consuming. Love Life is cerebral, seductive, provocative, and profound.

©1997 Zeruya Shalev. Worldwide translation copyright 2000 by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Interesting writing!

This is an interesting author with a very unique writing style. There are two of her books on Audible, both with very similar themes about love and relationships, but two entirely different stories. Enjoyed, but somewhat tiresome towards the end. Still, a worthwhile listen, with many absorbing albeit somewhat absurd-ist concepts. Certainly not for everyone, but definitely worth a try for the more adventurous! Narrator did a fine job!….☺️