From the Publisher
“Someone to Run With reveals again that Grossman is one of contemporary literature’s most versatile and absorbing writers....A deceptively simple story that is another revelation of Grossman’s genius.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Beautiful and arresting...Grossman has created a place of great dangers and improbable strokes of fortune, of compelling suspense and love’s labors gained.”—Los Angeles Times
“Passionate and heartfelt...a story that is at once universal and specific, a classical fable of love brought to contemporary Israel.”—Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times
Someone to Run With is a curious novel, an uneasy hybrid. It succeeds best where it strives least -- its climax is, in the way of cliche, most satisfying indeed -- but it also provides food for thought. What provokes is not Grossman's portrayal of the doubtless miserable entrapment of teenagers on the streets of Israel's cities but his insistent manipulation of diverse and incompatible narrative strategies. Ultimately, this is a literary political novel, or a politico-literary novel, that engages us with the means and effects of its storytelling more intently than with its depiction of any actual world. — Claire Messud
The New Yorker
In Grossman’s latest novel, which tumbles along the dusty streets of Jerusalem, adolescent idealism and angst keep the characters on the move. Assaf, a shy misfit, embarks upon a quixotic journey with a lost dog to find its mistress. Tamar, a caustic fifteen-year-old who can sing Mozart and Leonard Cohen on demand, runs away from home to find the criminals who have ensnared her older brother. A young street musician, in the grip of a heroin habit as formidable as his talent, stumbles through his routines with death close behind. The resulting picaresque is a cross between “Run Lola Run” and “Oliver Twist,” and as the reader waits for these solitary odysseys to intersect, the urgency becomes almost unbearable. Grossman evokes teen-age nobility and self-hatred in all its pimply particularity, while slyly suggesting that the arduous quest for connections should never be outgrown.
Publishers Weekly
Every once in a while, Grossman abandons his structurally intricate, morally complex novels of Israeli society, such as Be My Knife and See Under: Love, for lighter fare aimed at both adolescent and adult readers. But "lighter" is a relative term; like his previous adventure story The Zigzag Kid, this new novel drags its teenage protagonists through some heavy terrain. In this case, the milieu is the growing population of poor and drug-addicted runaways eking out a living on Jerusalem's streets. Assaf is an average Israeli teenage boy, shy and awkward, more comfortable with video games than with his schoolmates. His father arranges a do-nothing summer job for him with the City Sanitation Department, and he spends most of his time daydreaming about soccer until he is hitched up with a lost dog named Dinka and ordered to find its owner. Assaf learns, from the dog's retracing of its usual habits, that the owner's name is Tamar, a fellow teenager, but locating her quickly develops into something grander and more difficult-a knightly quest, on the order of a classic folk tale or hidden-door computer game, replete with guides (an elderly Greek nun, doped-up Russian immigrants), trolls (a vicious street gang), an evil king named Pesach and, of course, a princess to rescue. To Grossman's credit, Tamar is no typical lady-in-distress; she's on a quest of her own, to free her brother Shai from the clutches of the shady Pesach, a "manager" who exploits teenage street performers. To find him, she shaves her head and sings for spare change until she descends deep into the runaway world, perhaps too far to ever re-emerge. In Grossman's hands, this plot is both pleasingly familiar and made new through immersion in the details of Israeli life. Almog and Gurantz do a fine job translating the book's mix of teenage dialogue and lush description. (Jan.) Forecast: In Israel, this novel (and The Zigzag Kid) sold to adolescent as well as adult readers and was a bestseller. The Zigzag Kid fared less well in the U.S., and Someone to Run With may also have trouble finding the right audience here, since even Grossman's fans tend to prefer his more political writings. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
This new work from Grossman (Be My Knife) offers something new for the American reading public-a novel set in Israel that has nothing to do with the Palestinian dispute or the continuing impact of the Holocaust. That said, it is important to note that it's not a potential Disney production either. Its three main protagonists are 16-year-old Assaf, stuck in a boring summer job; Tamar, a lonely, albeit very talented, young singer who takes to the streets in search of her brother, Shai; and Dinka the dog, Tamar's companion and protector. Himself a talented musician, Shai is a heroin addict who has fallen under the power of Pesach, a Russian Mafia don who runs a pickpocketing operation using runaway street performers as bait. Tamar hopes that by performing on the streets herself she will be found by Pesach, brought into his operation, and led to her brother. The plan works, but escaping the Russian's clutches results in the loss of Dinka, who ends up in the pound where Assaf works. Told to locate the owner, Assaf finds himself trailing Dinka all over Jerusalem, encountering an assortment of rather eccentric characters, before finding Tamar and discovering feelings new to him. Appealing primarily to the serious young adult and the twentysomething audience, this belongs in most public libraries.-David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An agreeably melodramatic sixth novel from the prizewinning author (Be My Knife, 2001, etc.). Here, two Israeli teenagers undertake intersecting perilous quests. When Assaf, who's 16 and enduring a demeaning summertime job at Jerusalem's City Hall, is ordered to find (and fine) the owner of an obstreperous stray dog, he stumbles into a world reshaped by terrorist attacks, rampant criminality, and confused loyalties. Discovering that the person he seeks is a runaway girl (also 16) named Tamar, Assaf (and the dog, Dinka) prowl Jerusalem's darkest corners, receiving leading information from Theodora, an aged Greek nun who hasn't left her apartment in 50 years, yet seems to have been a de facto fairy godmother to vagabond youths and street people. Meanwhile, Grossman constructs a parallel narrative (beginning earlier than do Assaf's adventures) of Tamar's entry into a gang of street performers masterminded by criminal boss Pesach (whose other minions pick the pockets of his performers' audiences). We learn that Tamar, a precociously gifted singer, is seeking her brother Shai, a heroin addict in thrall to Pesach. The two narratives move swiftly, eventually joining for a prolonged climax, during which Tamar and Assaf see Shai through a grueling withdrawal, and Assaf understands the necessity and comfort of having "someone to run with" in such embattled times. This is a consistently absorbing tale, even when much of it strains credibility. Neither Theodora nor Pesach, for example, is, strictly speaking, a believable character. But we soon see that she is Grossman's version of Great Expectations's immortal recluse Miss Havisham-and that he is another version of Oliver Twist's enduringly creepyFagin. The Dickensian provenance and romantic texture here-and the hyperbole with which its young protagonists' exploits are imbued-in fact very effectively dramatize the experience of living in a volatile society and the resources required for survival therein. Grossman's most entertaining book yet.
