Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories

Courtsey: http://bookreviewsarundati.wordpress.com/I love this short story collection. Each one is just so brilliant and form-defying. These are the kind of stories that plague my dreams and nightmares each day. I wake up seeing these people, awaking to the call of their longings and threats, peeking from the edge of my seat in some miraculously acquired human condition. Etger Keret is Israeli, and he penned these stories in Hebrew originally. These have been translated by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, and Nathan Englander. My personal favourite is the title story.The stories are set in his head, and the author prefers to be identified as Jewish than Israeli. His writing style reminds me very much of Ibn-e-Safi’s own witty parables that are as absurd as they are rational, goofy yet urgent in all their strangeness. Discerning is his ear for detail that clamours above the noise around us; his prose elevates rather than distracts from this noise:“It all started with a dream. A short, fuzzy dream about his dead mother. In this dream the two of them were sitting on a straw mat in the middle of a clear white surface that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Next to them on this infinite white surface was a bubble gum machine with a bubble top, the old-fashioned kind where you put a coin in the slot, turn the handle – and out comes a bubble gum. And in his dream, Robbie’s mother told him that the afterworld was driving her up the wall, because the people were good, but there were no cigarettes. Not just no cigarettes, no coffee. No radio. Nothing.”Lies have character and soul, and are full seeing sentient beings. Time has its nails bitten. Cheesus Christ is a restaurant that serves hamburgers without cheese and is run by a clinically depressed CEO who refuses to answer e-mails. The situation is absurd, but the problem real. Wisdom abounds the nonsense: “When a dedicated employee turns to her employer with a problem, especially one related to the workplace, the least he could do is acknowledge her existence.” There is a loner who breakfasts alone in the cafe but learns to vicariously through others. Needles prick less than a father’s touch in another. Everyone is going through a hundred and one dress rehearsals; each character is constantly improvising. (“The fish’s secretary asked her to wait until he’d finished an international conference call with his partners in Taiwan”). These are coming-alive stories — no flat characters or dull plot points — only honking until “your heart’s content.” Another story’s narrator eulogizes his dog his dear friend his lover who talks to him in his dreams wearing a grey suit advising in human barritone, “everyone knows there’s no real money in developing the human race. Or any other race, for that matter. But since it’s [ecology] a new field that’s wide open taxationally, there’s nothing to stop me from submitting a mountain of receipts.” Then there’s the story about a man with a zipper mouth. Taking advantage of the fact that her lover slept with his mouth open, Ella slips her finger under his tongue to find a zip! But when she pulls at it, her lover Tsiki opens up “like an oyster”, and inside is Jurgen, a far more alive character. “Work is like a moustache,” he says, “it went out of style long ago.” These are just few glimpses into the quirky world of this joyous collection. All these characters are inward looking and draw their hallucinatory powers and worldly knowledge from this skill. If there is a writer whose fiction style I might identify with, it would be Etgar Keret! Ibn-e-Safi and Edwidge Danticat are others. Rushdie started it (for me), although his prose is trenchant with politics and histories and epic (at its peak), way more verbose and magical nihilist in comparison to Keret’s clever yet contained, dense yet ticklish, deliberate yet no less invisible storytelling. Style stems from a writer’s morality and political axis perhaps. How and where he grew up and when. And although I have enjoyed a lot of postmodern fiction in life, those works have often brimmed with salient iron structures and heroes and heroines who eschewed those; I don’t see any of that resistance functioning as a plot device in Keret’s work. His work is almost post-resistance and by that I don’t by any stretch mean lazy. Like a book of intelligent jokes and riddles, it offers momentous wit and humour. One of Keret’s narrators describe this work best as “an amalgam of deep insights and aluminium. It won’t rust, it won’t bust, but it may wander. It’s super contemporary, and timelessly literary.” The true test of his storytelling however may lie in whether he is able to sustain an entire novel on the strings of his absurdo-realism and something I wonder often about, i.e., could Etgar Keret pull off a marathon?Courtsey: http://bookreviewsarundati.wordpress.com/

Etgar Keret can do more in three or four pages than many short story writers can in stories that border on novellas. There are nearly three dozen stories that span just 188 pages, yet many are simply brilliant.The eponymous and first story starts with a directive: "Tell me a story." Under gunpoint, the narrator - Etgar - is ordered to make up a story. He is interrupted early on: "That's not a story...That's an eyewitness report. It's exactly what's happening here and now. Exactly what we're trying to run away from. Don't you go and dump reality on us like a garbage truck. Use your imagination, man, create, invent, take it all the way."I quoted that passage at length because it's really the raison d'etre of the collection. Etgar, an Israeli writer, leaves the politics and the moral quandaries to others such as David Grossman, Amos Oz and Nathan Englander. His stories focus on the escape from reality through stories that stretch and define us.Some - as would be the case with any collection - are better than others. I'll call out a few: Lieland, where the subjects of lies become real, is one of my favorites. The protagonist, Robbie, learns that his lies live and thrive in another dimension and he meets his "lies come alive" simply by turning a handle.Teamwork, another fine story, starts like this: "My son wants me to kill her. He's still young and doesn't express this perfectly yet, but I know exactly what he's after." The "her" refers to his maternal grandmother; he is the product of divorce and a brutal plan is soon imagined by his obsequious father. Or take another story: Unzipping; in it, the narrator finds a small zipper under her lover's tongue; when she pulls it, he opens up "like an oyster" with a second man revealed. One more: Mourner's Meal. a very recent widow opens up her failing restaurant the morning after his funeral, and gains connection with a group of strangers.Not all the stories succeed as well; it makes me wish there were a way I could rate this a 4.5. But the ones that DO shine are so luminous that it is hard for me not to rate upward.

People who need all the answers served on a platter,- who have no sense for the absurd,- who don't enjoy short stories with open ends,- who do not care to see realistic interpersonal relations even if they don't look pretty,- who have no sense of dark humor,- who are dogmatic and self righteous,will most likely not enjoy this book.I loved it for all the above reasons and more.I loved it because it is weird, sad, cruel, humorous like life, because some stories begin and end abruptly like glimpses into someone elses life through a keyhole.Because it does have a lot to do with our reality in Israel but not just.But most of all because I sense a deep compassion of the author for his fellow beings and the absurd relations and situations they navigate themselves into and how they really don't have much choice.And last but not least, because it is really well translated, as I myself am not able to read the Hebrew original.My first book by Etgar Keret which was given to me by my teenage son who adores Keret and read everything by him.And now I adore Keret too. Having said this not everything my bibliophile kids are excited about resonates with me.

Robbie, one of the protagonists in Etgar Keret's new short story collection, SUDDENLY, A KNOCK AT THE DOOR, has a dream that changes the way he understands the world around him. The story, LIELAND, one of my favourites among the thirty five in this slim volume, is on the surface a simple growing up story of a boy who started lying at a young age and continues to do so, successfully, in ever more elaborate ways, until... "it all started with a dream". By reaching into the surreal world of dreams, Keret confronts his protagonist with the consequences of his behaviour. It is a touching story, lightheartedly told, yet with deeper meaning. It is a good example for Keret's short stories that show great variety, both in content as well as structure. Some are witty, amusing or bizarre; others more serious, moving, and some even macabre, quite a few reach into the surreal. Each provides food for thought for the reader.Keret is known as a master story teller of the short form. He combines his talent for bringing a scenario of a story to life in just a few sentences with the sharp pencil of a caricaturist who captures the essence of a person's identity and fault-lines with seemingly no effort at all. Some stories are expressly set in a physical place, like Chicago, or in Israel, others could happen almost anywhere. While the stories are all distinct, with a range of central characters, recurrent themes focus on the internal and intimate world, like love lost and betrayed, the fathers' affection for their young sons, or the yearning for a happier life. Other stories deal, often in an ironic tone, with the day-to-day of life, whether focused on neighbours, business, or the underbelly of society. Yet others, and some of the shortest, reach into the more philosophical fundamentals of life.It seems to me that the shorter the story - some more like vignettes - the more the reader is invited to reflect on the deeper meaning that is hiding behind the deceptively simple writing. Among these is another one of my favourites: WHAT DO WE HAVE IN OUR POCKETS? On two pages, the author explores in a very practical way the deeper meaning of altruism. While the stories of fathers and sons are mostly gently told and clearly important to the author, for me the sheer number of stories focusing on male perspectives on life felt somewhat one-sided and on occasion repetitive. On the other hand, Keret also displays great perceptiveness when he does reach beyond them. In CREATIVE WRITING, a young woman joins a course on creative writing to help her overcome a recent tragedy. UNZIPPING is a strange, surreal story about unusual ways to find you're your inner self (or not). The final story, SURPRISE PARTY, is a convincing if sarcastic take on the wife organizing a surprise birthday party for her husband of many years. In all, the stories capture life at the author sees it, with all its shades of grey and the odd spot of bright colour. [Friederike Knabe]

Suddenly, a Knock at the Door, Etgar Keret's first new collection in ten years, offers a masterful selection of short stories. Like those in his previous collections, the stories in Suddenly... are delightful little tales of the drama and absurdity of everyday life. These are extraordinary stories of seemingly average folks and the strange and surreal circumstances in which they find themselves.While Suddenly... is full of so many great stories that it is hard to pick favourites, there are a number of tales that particularly stand out. In `Simyon' a young woman confronts the death of her forgotten husband, while in `Unzipping' the truth about a boyfriend's character is revealed. Both of these stories offer surprisingly insights into the nature of humanity and the quality of relationships. Many of Keret's stories are woven around the mundane spectres of daily life but some of them are quite delightfully, magically odd. In `What, of this Goldfish, Would You Ask' a documentary filmmaker stumbles into a lonely Russian's contemporary Aladdin-style dilemma, while `Haemorrhoid' presents a surprising take on the nature of power and affliction. These are just four favourites from the collection but there are many more sublime stories to be enjoyed.It's hard to spot Keret himself among the disparate characters who people this collection, although several of the stories are about writers. In `Suddenly, a Knock on the Door', the title story and first in the collection, a writer has to ward off increasingly aggressive demands that he produces a new story. Hopefully there were fewer pistols involved in the writing of this book. In `Creative Writing' Aviad's girlfriend experiences unexpected success with her story writing while Aviad himself can't seem to master the ending. In `What Animal Are You?' a writer has to satisfy the demands of fame while still preserving the innocent imagination of his son. Perhaps these stories shed some light on Keret's creative process; certainly they're very entertaining.Keret's stories have always been on the particularly short side of short stories but they are most often finely crafted gems that tell their tales perfectly. While his stories are frequently so good that you might wish they could go on longer, the actual tales tend to reach satisfying, if often surprising, conclusions. It's rare that Keret misses the mark with his story construction and, in fact, there is only one story in this collection that doesn't seem to offer the full picture. `Snot', the one about the visit to the acupuncturist, stubbornly remains a snippet that could go on to greatness but actually just trails off. Still, that is a very minor issue when you consider just how good the other thirty-six stories in Suddenly... are.Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is an amazing collection of fantastical stories. Keret's stories are by turn poignant and funny, brutal and humane, and always supremely entertaining. These stories are bite-sized treats and the end of the book leaves you yearning for more. I hope the wait for Keret's next collection will be significantly less than ten years.

Nouvelles pleine d'humour par un des auteurs israëliens les plus vendus au monde. Certaines avaient été publiées auparavant dans le New-York Times.Beaucoup de second degré, cet auteur est dingue!

Kafkaesque, the writer has a wierd imagination and you can imagine him sitting around the salon as Kafka did, reading to his friends as they delight in his dialogue. Kafka would be amused.

Some interesting stories but often very short so no expectation of character development and therefore not disappointed. Not entirely sure of the point.