The Same Sea

In this book of narrative verse, emotional conflicts and competing voices and viewpoints reconcile themselves into what Oz calls "a number of intersecting triangles." The story centers on a group of weary and perplexed people living in Tel Aviv, Israel, including Albert, a grieving widower; Rico, his distraught son; and Rico's girlfriend, Dita. The book achieves harmony through its characters, all of whom are trying to resolve conflicts in their lives. As the narrator points out, "The peace process is slow and painful. You will have to make one or two further concessions. Only what is truly a matter of life and death should not be negotiable." In this powerful work, Oz lays bare many issues that only appear to be earth-shattering. Most important, he reveals the quotidian concessions that negotiation requires of us all.
—Stephen Whited

Publishers Weekly

A meditation, a lamentation, a quest for meaning, a story of family love and of erotic longing, and a vibrantly poetic prose poem, this latest novel by one of Israel's preeminent writers ends with a tentative (but only tentative) affirmation about the future of his nation. That message is the subtle subtext of this narrative of intertwined lives. Albert Danon is a mild accountant whose beloved wife, Nadia, has died, and whose son, Rico, has exiled himself to Tibet, Bangladesh and other remote places where he is haunted by his mother's memory and by his conviction that "everyone... is condemned to wait for their own death locked in a separate cage." Another member of this restless, bitter generation, Rico's girlfriend, Dita, moves in with Albert when a shabby film producer cheats her of all her money. Suffused with lust and shame, Albert desires Dita, even while an elderly widow yearns for him; meanwhile, Dita sleeps with Rico's best friend. This small domestic comedy is expressed in musical language charged with lyric intensity, translated by de Lange in collaboration with the author. The free-form verse hovers on the edge of poetry, sometimes slipping into rhyme. A singing bird, the desert and the eternal sea are recurring images, and references to biblical passages add texture. The characters, including the narrator, live in the shadow of their own mortality and general fear. "We have wandered enough; it is time to make peace," the narrator muses. Perhaps, the reader feels, Nadia represents the lost dream of peace that hovers in the memory. In a prefatory statement, Oz (Panther in the Basement, etc.) writes that he thinks this book comes closest to what he wants to say. His eloquentmessage illuminates a book of classic resonance and haunting literary beauty. 9-city author tour. (Oct.) Forecast: Because of its unconventional format, hovering between prose and verse, this novel may depend on hand-selling to discriminating readers. Oz's existing audience, however, will respond to his usual mixture of cynicism and hope. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Oz's most experimental fiction in years uses poetry and prose to tell a convoluted story of interlocking relationships. A new novel from one of the most compelling voices in Israeli literature (The Story Begins, 1999, etc.) should be a cause for celebration, but The Same Sea is at best an intriguing mess. The problem lies in a collision of form and content, and a large cast of characters whose relationships are intricate without being interesting. Albert, an accountant, is recently widowed; his son Enrico is now wandering the Himalayas, trying to learn why his mother died. Dita, Enrico's girlfriend, swindled by would-be film producer Dubi, moves in with Albert in an act of desperation. Albert tries to untangle her contract with Dubi and ends up as Dubi's tax adviser (and reluctant father figure). Add to this a mysterious Portuguese woman who sleeps with Enrico, a carpenter dead by suicide, Albert's co-worker and confidante Bettina, who has a yen for him dating back decades, a cryptic yuppie named Giggy who sleeps with Dita and, just to make the whole thing depressingly postmodern, the Narrator (clearly Oz himself, and gradually an active participant in the roundelay). The primary problem is that Oz chooses to tell this overstuffed tale as a series of vignettes, none more than four or five pages long, most much shorter, cross-cutting cinematically between Tel Aviv, Arad, Tibet, the past, the present, and even the future. As a result, few of the people acquire resonance, none of the situations are allowed to develop in a straight line, and, ultimately, the reader doesn't care what happens. There are moments of genuine power: the re-creation of Albert's awkward courting of Nadia has apoignancy underlined by our knowledge of her death; much of the material involving the Narrator is wittily self-deprecating. The verse passages, though, are almost embarrassing and the overall effect is surprisingly numbing. A major disappointment from a major author. Author tour