Matches

Publishers Weekly

The title is an Israeli army term for a soldier, or one who "strikes, burns, and dies." Nathan Falk, an American-born Jew and the son of a Holocaust survivor, arrives in Israel seeking "for once, to be generally human, immersed in a kinky-haired majority"-and to do the three years of regular military service and subsequent one-month-a-year reserve duty required of every Israeli male. The narrative falls into 13 Israel Defense Forces patrol vignettes, centered by one novella-size chapter that follows Falk's affair with his best friend's alcoholic girlfriend, along with the honor killing of a 17-year-old Bedouin girl by a man in Falk's (very multi-culti) unit. Throughout, Kaufman (Jew Boy), an American Jew who did multiple IDF tours and now lives in San Francisco, sketches the fault lines of Israeli society as heightened by the highly charged, often violent patrols in the West Bank and Gaza: Sephardic vs. Ashkenazi; native vs. emigrE; Arab vs. Jew. The political turmoil, ruined relationships, coiled anger and psychological damage the patrols leave in their wake is made vivid-and personal-at every turn, as are IDF procedures and moments of unexpected cooperation across borders. As a novel, it's baggy, but the result gives readers a fascinating look at the story behind the numbing newspaper tallies. (Oct. 24) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Nathan Falk, an American fighting in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), faces many difficulties in battle and patrolling the streets of Gaza-in addition to the jeers of soldiers from his battalion who can't figure out why someone with an American passport would be willing to risk his life for a country not his own. A Zionist and a good soldier, Nathan narrates the vicissitudes of war with great intensity. In the process of repeated call-ups, he gains the support of his fighting unit. High stakes off the battlefield ensue as well, including games of Risk and love making to his best friend's wife. Along the way, Nathan learns much from the Bedouin tracker about cultural mores. In this finely wrought, visceral first novel, Kaufman (editor, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry) offers a thinly veiled account of his experiences as an American serving tours of duty in the IDF; it is also a window into the current Israeli conflict. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The experiences of an American Jew fighting as a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces. The matches of the title are soldiers, in IDF lingo. For his first novel, Kaufman (Jew Boy, memoir) has drawn on his own tours of duty with the IDF. His protagonist, Nathan Falk, is a twenty-something New York Jew with Israeli citizenship who has completed two years of regular service and now serves at least a month each year in the reserves, mostly in the Gaza Strip or on the Israeli/Egyptian border. He details a scary encounter with an ultra-orthodox settler who predicts an eventual war between the Jews; a house-to-house search in which Falk makes an important arrest; the destruction of a house owned by the parents of a terrorist; and the nighttime killing of desert infiltrators, thanks to the fine work of Bachshi, the IDF's top Bedouin tracker. Kaufman's passages on Bedouin culture are the most interesting, even if Bachshi sounds like the generic Voice of the Desert. Meanwhile, what is Falk up to the rest of the year? Hard to say. He lives alone in a Jerusalem apartment and balls Maya, wife of his best friend Dotan, off fighting in Lebanon (Falk never claimed to be nice). All three are part of a "bohemian cultural elite," but we don't know how Falk supports himself. At one point he has a crisis of conscience and decides " I didn't want to hurt (Arabs) anymore in order to survive;" he rushes to Jerusalem to be comforted by Maya, who then disappears from the story, along with the guilty conscience. The chronology is hard to follow, and by the final third, which consists of snapshots of reservists dealing with Palestinian civilians, "all guilty until proven innocent," all novelistic coherence hasevaporated. This is a sloppily assembled work. What Kaufman does best is convey the brittle camaraderie of the reservists; a story collection or another memoir might have served his purposes better.