Jerusalem Beach, Stories by Iddo Gefen

This was really, really good. In fact, it’s dangerously close to excellent.
For me the location was the main draw, I love reading internationally and have read some interesting things out of Israel. This short story collection is definitely up there quality wise. It stands to mention that this is the author’s debut and not only is he that impressively good right out of the gate, but he’s also really young, almost too young to be that good, to write fiction of such striking emotional maturity and complexity. Maybe I’m just being agist. Or maybe not. Maybe Geffen is just that unicorn of an author who genuinely understands the power of written world on a profoundly sophisticated level, after all he has the professional training and education for it, his day job actually involved studying the way storytelling affects brainwaves or something really fascinating like that. So writing fiction is a perfect companion to that and man, can this guy write.
It starts with a tale of an 80 year old widower who decides to join the army. It’s possibly the book’s longest story, though most are fairly long, getting shorter as the book progresses, and it’s perfectly emblematic of this collection…it represents lives and situations singular to its place of origin and does it warmly, humorously, wryly, empathetically and realistically.
The stories continue in similar way until about midway through where they, quite seamlessly, veer into science fiction territory, all the while maintaining a characters first approach, specifically Israeli characters first, so it’s really just a continuation of the theme, just done from different angles. Very interesting and original angles, too, exactly my sort of both fiction and science fiction. And what themes...all the main themes... modern oxymoron of an intricately interconnected world and disconnected individuals, love, loneliness, search for meaning and place in the world. All the important things in life.
Be it on the Jerusalem Beach (the collection’s most emotionally potent tale about an elderly couple saying goodbye) or in outer space on a privately owned planet closest to the Sun, these stories do a terrific job of representing the mentality and inner workings of a modern society whose idiosyncrasies reflect its singular geopolitics. The author definitely accomplishes to bring to the table all that the official book description promises and more and does so excellently. I’m say he’s a prodigious talent, but that might be considered agist also, so…let’s just say he’s really timelessly good, clever, versatile, emotionally intelligent, etc. and I’d be very interested in checking out his next book, a novel this time, whenever it comes out. This was a great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.