- Hardcover: 359 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday (Jan 1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 038523130X
- ISBN-13: 978-0385231305
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,907,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Five Seasons
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Product Description
Product Description
In the autumn, Molkho's wife dies. His years of loving care have ended and his newfound freedom proves unlike the one he had imagined. It is uneasy, filled with the erotic fantasies of a man who must fall in love, but whose longing for meaningful relationships is held hostage by the spirit of his wife. Winter sees him in Berlin in a comic encounter with a legal adviser from his office in Haifa. Spring takes him to the Galilee and an impossible infatuation. Jerusalem in the summer brings another man's wife and an extraordinary request. And the following autumn there is Nina whose yearning for her Russian home brings Molkho back to life. 'In this finely observed and oddly moving comic novel...Yehoshua makes us feel [Molkho's] humanity - and deftly wins him our sympathy.' Kirkus
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A. B. YEHOSHUA, is the author of numerous novels as well as a collection of short stories. He is one of Israel's pre-eminent novelists and has been awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for his lifetime's creative contribution to Israel, the National Jewish Book Award in the U.S., and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize in the U.K.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
the quality of translation brings the essence of the author's intent to a reader who doesn't have benefit of knowledge of the original language. Israeli middle-class/academic professional's life, depicted with candour and wry humour. There is pragmatism, realism and stoicism. Try it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
AB Yehoshua in Close to Top Form
11 Oct 2004
Format:Paperback
AB is a hit or miss author. A Late Divorce stands as one of my favorite books of all time. AB was pitch-perfect in capturing Israel & domestic life among the less-than-perfect family. Liberated Bride was AB at his worst: slow as molasses with a tangent everywhere. I couldn't get through it. Five Seasons is beautiful. Very little happens, but it doesn't matter. It takes a fine writer to portray a lazy Shabbat afternoon so simply and grief so utterly. There is little verbal poetry in AB; he prefers to explain, line by line, the making of a meal or a long drive to the North. But when he hits it--as he does here--you are in Israel & in the mind of one person as he gets through life. And that is poetry of a unique kind.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A Subtle Portrait of Grief
25 Dec 2009
Format:Paperback
This engrossing and somewhat strange novel centers on Molkho, an Israeli bureaucrat whose wife has died after a long battle with cancer. In the five seasons that follow, Molkho copes with his mixed emotions and searches for love through a series of infatuations.
Yehoshua's writing style is uniquely realistic, providing even some of the most mundane details of the protagonist's life. He paints an equally detailed portrait of Molkho's psychology, which is full of contradiction, nuance, and ambivalence. Molkho tentatively enjoys his newfound freedom after years of tending to his dying wife, but clearly feels the emptiness of her absence. He reacts to the objects of his infatuation with muted, yet rapidly shifting emotions. Sometimes, he behaves in ways that seem strange but make sense in the context of his grief: in one scene, his nostalgia for a newly ended era in his life drives him to snoop around the nursing ward of his mother-in-law's retirement home. While there, he recalls with a mixture of wistfulness, melancholy, and pride the endless hours he spent at his wife's bedside.
Yehoshua uses some subtle and interesting devices to convey Molkho's progress as his numbness thaws and he begins to reenter the world of the living. During much of the novel, even the characters most intimate to Molkho have no names; his children are "the high school student," "the college student," and "the soldier." Yet as the story progresses, names appear and Molkho's world seems to come alive again.
FIVE SEASONS is probably not for everybody. Some readers will likely find Yehoshua's detailed yet stark writing tedious. However, I found the novel enjoyable and absorbing. It is an intimate depiction of a character who is both ordinary and complex.
Yehoshua's writing style is uniquely realistic, providing even some of the most mundane details of the protagonist's life. He paints an equally detailed portrait of Molkho's psychology, which is full of contradiction, nuance, and ambivalence. Molkho tentatively enjoys his newfound freedom after years of tending to his dying wife, but clearly feels the emptiness of her absence. He reacts to the objects of his infatuation with muted, yet rapidly shifting emotions. Sometimes, he behaves in ways that seem strange but make sense in the context of his grief: in one scene, his nostalgia for a newly ended era in his life drives him to snoop around the nursing ward of his mother-in-law's retirement home. While there, he recalls with a mixture of wistfulness, melancholy, and pride the endless hours he spent at his wife's bedside.
Yehoshua uses some subtle and interesting devices to convey Molkho's progress as his numbness thaws and he begins to reenter the world of the living. During much of the novel, even the characters most intimate to Molkho have no names; his children are "the high school student," "the college student," and "the soldier." Yet as the story progresses, names appear and Molkho's world seems to come alive again.
FIVE SEASONS is probably not for everybody. Some readers will likely find Yehoshua's detailed yet stark writing tedious. However, I found the novel enjoyable and absorbing. It is an intimate depiction of a character who is both ordinary and complex.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
The Israeli Everyman
12 Aug 2009
Format:Paperback
A.B. Yehoshua has accomplished something quite extraordinary in Five Seasons in the character of Molkho. Buffeted by life, Molkho tries to pick himself up and begin again. That existence confounds does not deter him, for he keeps going. Yehoshua has made Molkho a hero without making him heroic. This is a man who works at a mid-level bureaucratic job in the Israel government; he is not an intellectual (a self-confession), does not read books except on rare occasions, but is deeply moved by music and the experience of its rapture which he repeatedly turns to find the deeper meanings of life. He is naturally curious and humane, caring deeply for those around him with genuine emotion untouched by sentimentality or mere self-service.
Five Seasons counts as one of Yehoshua's most profound books and steers clear of the literary experimentation of some of his other work. All in all, Five Seasons has the depth and range of a masterpiece.
Five Seasons counts as one of Yehoshua's most profound books and steers clear of the literary experimentation of some of his other work. All in all, Five Seasons has the depth and range of a masterpiece.
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