Lead Review

• Book: Between Friends
• Location: Israel
• Author: Amos Oz

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These stories portray a series of interlinked characters. The physical beauty of this world is deftly drawn. There are “wooden trellises for grapevines”, “a burbling fountain filled with goldfish”, “blossoming orchards”, “tall cypress trees”. As the stories progress, however, there are darker aspects to the Edenic setting: the “stench” that seeps from the chicken coops, the “torn-out feathers … stuck to the wire netting”, the “sharp screech of fear” that bursts now and then from the cages, “as if a chicken had suddenly guessed how all of this would end”. Rebecca Adams

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