It is April 1946. Evelyn Sert, 20 years old, a hairdresser from Soho sails for Palestine where Jewish refugees and idealists are gathering from across Europe to start a new life in a brand new country.
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In April, 1946 Evelyn Sert, a 20-year-old East End London hairdresser, sets out for Palestine. "This is my story", she writes, "Scratch a Jew and you've got a story". Evelyn's story in Linda Grant's When I Lived in Modern Times is no less complicated than that of any other displaced European Jew in the post-war years--separated from her family and searching for some kind of reliable identity for herself in an inhospitable new land. In shining modern Bauhaus-influenced Tel Aviv she finds that she is more English than Israeli and she becomes Priscilla Jones, a peroxided English girl with an absent policeman husband. She is at her most "real", it seems, when pretending, revelling in her ability to be entirely accepted among the English women whose hair she cuts and curls. Beyond their petty and casually anti-semitic circle, by contrast, she struggles with Hebrew, the heat, the unfamiliar food and alien, exotic way of life.
But in Palestine the English are the enemy and Evelyn is drawn into a world of shifting identities, lies and secrets by her passionate Zionist boyfriend Johnny. Even then, she is never quite sure which side she is on, or where she belongs.
Linda Grant writes with quiet assurance and a strong sense of purpose. Her Tel Aviv is a city of contradictions and of hope. Her heroine is a fully believable figure, a chameleon character of a kind readily recognisable to those of us who grew up as part of the seismic displacement of peoples that accompanied World War Two, as also, probably, to anyone who has been caught up in the more recent exoduses from Bosnia, Kosova and Albania. Linda Grant won the 2000 Orange Prize for Fiction for When I Lived in Modern Times. --Lisa Jardine
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'...a decent, intelligent love story, intimately expressed.' Observer
'...a decent, intelligent love story, intimately expressed.' Observer
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I am quite perplexed at the confusion there seems to be about this book. Having read it at the time it came out, it seemed obvious that what it is about is the birth and death of idealism. Evelyn Sert is girl with no past going to a country which she (and many Jews in that era) believed had no past either. Gradually, she becomes aware that the simplistic ideas she had about the Promised Land are either wrong or more complex than she'd first thought. Palestine is full of refugees cut off from their homes and their histories, believing only in the future, because, as the author says, the past (this is 1946 remember, only a year after the Holocaust) was a total nightmare. All their faith is in the shining white city of Tel Aviv and in the marvellous last chapter when Evelyn returns there in old age we see that it is this city which is the true metaphor for the book.
This is a complex work full of moral ambiguities and paradoxes. In an age of nationalism, when people all over the world where defining themselves by the birth of new countries, Evelyn sees herself as an Israeli but can't get round the fact that she has more in common with the hated and anti-semitic British.As the child of British parents who grew up in Ireland, I can identify with many of Evelyn's confusions.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is the best novel I read in 2000, and deserves the Orange Prize and should have been shortlisted for Booker. An enthralling tale set in Tel Aviv at the foundation of Israel, it is narrated by Evelyn, a hairdresser who is Jewish but who can pass for a Gentile. She falls in love with a terrorist, and has a passionate affair with him before violence forces them apart. What is wonderful about this novel is the intelligence and passion with with it is written. The heat and light and purity of the new city are vividly evoked. So is the intensity of an all-consuming love affair. It feeds both the mind and the heart. I have been enraged by the way male critics, especially Robert McCrum of the Observer have sneered at the novel without, by his own admission in his column, having read it - because he thought Zadie Smith should have won the Orange instead. This is a wonderful, wonderful novel which neither my husband nor I nor anyone we lent it to could put down. It deserves to be a best-seller.
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In many ways this is an interesting read - it takes an original slant on recent history and presents an unusual version of events. I just wanted to add a couple of other comments:-
I found references to holocaust survivors to be very revealing - often viewed (quite understandably) as angels - they are portrayed here as wild, individualistic and tough - refusing to obey rules and share work or luxuries - as a result of the dreadful 'communal living' in the camps.
What has not been mentioned so far in the reviews, and is not really touched on at all in the book, is of course, the Palestinian people. Those who were displaced by the displaced, as Edward Said described his own people "the victims of the victims".
In this respect, the book is guilty of the sins of many older books about colonisation - treating the 'natives' as an irrelevance. Many older texts have the excuse of the historical and cultural environment in which they were written. Grant cannot claim the same excuse.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
When I lived in Modern Times, Great
Loved this book, well written, well observed, humour which helped the story move along. I was pleased to learn more of this part history, and although a novel, I felt it to be well... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sue Myring
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
I found it breath taking. Grown up, intelligent, informative read. I just finished it so can't think clearly yet, but I loved it. Read more
Published on 31 Mar 2011 by E.H.
5.0 out of 5 stars
story of a London girl and the birth of a nation
Thoroughly enjoyable account of a time of flux and chaos as the British look for a way out and the survivors of the Holocaust look for a way in. Read more
Published on 15 Feb 2011 by bushman
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping.
Brings to life the glistening Bauhaus 'White City' of 1940s Tel-Aviv like no other book I've yet read. Read more
Published on 16 Oct 2010 by Paul Harris
4.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it
A great account of the birth of Israel with great characters and most of all a fantastic pace. Every page has a wonder of its own.
Published on 3 Jun 2007 by Reader
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing but readable
This book was recommended to me by a friend who normally has great taste in books so I was slightly disappointed after reading this. Read more
Published on 25 Sep 2002 by 30several
3.0 out of 5 stars
way too shallow for the subject matter at hand!
Lynda Grant fails miserably in portraying the mood of the people at that time. Imagine thousands of persecuted, homeless Jews pouring into Palestine only to be refused entry into... Read more
Published on 5 July 2001
1.0 out of 5 stars
quite extraordinary that this book won the Orange Prize
This book has had some very good reviews, as well as winning the Orange Prize this year. I find it absolutely incredible that it was praised so highly, and surprising that it found... Read more
Published on 24 April 2001
2.0 out of 5 stars
20-factor way of rating Linda Grant's book
In case others would like to adapt my rating scheme for their own use, with this novel or others, here's my socring for 'When I lived in Modern Times' - out of 10 for each... Read more
Published on 8 Mar 2001 by rhino@dial.pipex.com
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting if dry historical fiction
Difficult to understand why this has had awards and plaudits.
As a historical account of the Jewish and English communities in Palestine and in particular Tel Aviv just after... Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2001
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