Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Hogarth (2013), Paperback, 368 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML: A �??searing debut�?� about three young women coming of age, experiencing �??the absurdities of life and love on the precipice of violence�?� (Vogue) Yael, Avishag, and Lea grow up together in a tiny, dusty Israeli village, attending a high school made up of caravan classrooms, passing notes to each other to alleviate the universal boredom of teenage life. When they are conscripted into the army, their lives change in unpredictable ways, influencing the women they become and the friendship that they struggle to sustain. Yael trains marksmen and flirts with boys. Avishag stands guard, watching refugees throw themselves at barbed-wire fences. Lea, posted at a checkpoint, imagines the stories behind the familiar faces that pass by her day after day. They gossip about boys and whisper of an ever more violent world just beyond view. They drill, constantly, for a moment that may never come. They live inside… (more)
Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction (Longlist — 2013)
Maine Readers' Choice Award (Longlist — 2013)
Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature (Finalist — 2013)
Wingate Literary Prize (Shortlist — 2014)
5 Under 35 Award (2011)
Language
User reviews
LibraryThing member SamSattler
Simply put, Shani Boianjiu is, as she proves in her debut novel, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, one hell of a writer. What makes the book especially remarkable is that Boianjiu is still not much older than the three young women whose coming-of-age stories are at the heart of her story. In
Avishag, Yael, and Leah are three high school girls living in a small Northern Galilee town where everyone, almost by necessity, knows everyone else. The students, like young people in any small town, are generally bored with their lives and dreaming of life after high school. The big difference for them is, of course, that as they turn 18 and leave high school, each student, male or female, will be required to serve two years in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The girls, when their time to enlist comes, enter the IDF at different times and have very different experiences. Avishag becomes a guard responsible for keeping refugees on their side of barbed-wire fencing, Yael spends her days turning recruits into marksmen, and Leah becomes a checkpoint guard where she must be on constant alert for would-be suicide bombers. Typically, the girls will spend more time fighting boredom than directly confronting the dangers of terrorism, but each will be aged (if not necessarily matured) and otherwise changed by their two years of military service.
Boianjiu allows her three central characters a first person voice to tell their own stories – but, because the voices are not always distinct, this can leave the reader unsure which of the girls is doing the speaking. Using a series of flashbacks and back stories, she intertwines the three lives over a number of years as the young women struggle to maintain the friendships that were strained even before they left home for the military.
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid was originally conceived and published in short story format. The incident in which three protesters request that border guards meet them with escalating levels of resistance (perhaps my favorite story in the book) is, in fact, one I remember reading in The New Yorker magazine some time back. That the book was originally written as a series of standalone stories is both a strong point and a weak point. On the one hand, the incidents, taken separately, are enlightening looks inside the Israeli military structure from a female point-of-view. On the other, the narrative structure and what are often indistinct first-person voices make the “whole story” a rather difficult one to follow.
That said, it is obvious that Shani Boianjiu is a talented writer, and I look forward to a more conventionally structured novel from her next time out. She has a bright future.
Rated at: 3.5
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2011, in fact, Boianjiu, at age twenty-four, became the youngest ever National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree.Avishag, Yael, and Leah are three high school girls living in a small Northern Galilee town where everyone, almost by necessity, knows everyone else. The students, like young people in any small town, are generally bored with their lives and dreaming of life after high school. The big difference for them is, of course, that as they turn 18 and leave high school, each student, male or female, will be required to serve two years in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The girls, when their time to enlist comes, enter the IDF at different times and have very different experiences. Avishag becomes a guard responsible for keeping refugees on their side of barbed-wire fencing, Yael spends her days turning recruits into marksmen, and Leah becomes a checkpoint guard where she must be on constant alert for would-be suicide bombers. Typically, the girls will spend more time fighting boredom than directly confronting the dangers of terrorism, but each will be aged (if not necessarily matured) and otherwise changed by their two years of military service.
Boianjiu allows her three central characters a first person voice to tell their own stories – but, because the voices are not always distinct, this can leave the reader unsure which of the girls is doing the speaking. Using a series of flashbacks and back stories, she intertwines the three lives over a number of years as the young women struggle to maintain the friendships that were strained even before they left home for the military.
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid was originally conceived and published in short story format. The incident in which three protesters request that border guards meet them with escalating levels of resistance (perhaps my favorite story in the book) is, in fact, one I remember reading in The New Yorker magazine some time back. That the book was originally written as a series of standalone stories is both a strong point and a weak point. On the one hand, the incidents, taken separately, are enlightening looks inside the Israeli military structure from a female point-of-view. On the other, the narrative structure and what are often indistinct first-person voices make the “whole story” a rather difficult one to follow.
That said, it is obvious that Shani Boianjiu is a talented writer, and I look forward to a more conventionally structured novel from her next time out. She has a bright future.
Rated at: 3.5
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LibraryThing member Litfan
This is a stark, powerful novel about growing up in Israel, where everyone does military service once they come of age. Alternating between the perspectives of childhood friends Leah, Yael, and Avishag, with occasional third person descriptions of other characters not central to the story, but who
The novel is not character-driven, nor particularly plot-driven; rather, it presents a gritty, honest portrait of life in Israel, particularly during military service. It invites the reader to stay for awhile in a world where you can neither accept nor ignore that danger is, at every moment, just a heartbeat away, and to explore the impact of such a world on the human psyche.
It’s also a novel that doesn’t pull any punches; there are graphic and violent scenes in the novel, and those who are sensitive to those types of scenes may be put off by the story. While I found these scenes disturbing, they also seemed necessary to painting a realistic picture. A very well-written novel that will appeal to a broad audience, but especially to those interested in current issues in the Middle East.
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cross the women’s paths at checkpoints or elsewhere, the story moves in time through their younger years, military time, and their lives after the military. The novel is not character-driven, nor particularly plot-driven; rather, it presents a gritty, honest portrait of life in Israel, particularly during military service. It invites the reader to stay for awhile in a world where you can neither accept nor ignore that danger is, at every moment, just a heartbeat away, and to explore the impact of such a world on the human psyche.
It’s also a novel that doesn’t pull any punches; there are graphic and violent scenes in the novel, and those who are sensitive to those types of scenes may be put off by the story. While I found these scenes disturbing, they also seemed necessary to painting a realistic picture. A very well-written novel that will appeal to a broad audience, but especially to those interested in current issues in the Middle East.
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LibraryThing member Beamis12
Some books do not appeal to all people and this one just didn't appeal to me. The stream of consciousness writing was not smooth but more of a staccato and the plot was far from linear. Abrupt jumps from one person to the next, the changes of tenses and the back and forth just made it impossible
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for me to connect with the characters. I just really could not identify with them at all. There were periods in the book, times I found something amusing or of interest and just when I thought I might get into it after all, it shifted to another person. This might work for a different reader but not for this one. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu is a rough ... really rough read. The story deals with three Israeli women, Yael, Avishag, and Lea, and is not the typical linear story that I'm used to seeing. Rather, it seemed as if this book was made up of fragments of a story which took us
In each fragment, the reader is given a glimpse of what is going on - and that glimpse could be describing a place or job, it could be delving into the mind and thoughts of the girl it's focused on, or it could be a third party narrator talking about the ramifications of a certain action and what is going on in the outside world. Regardless of how the narration style is, each snippet of the story is powerful, written in an extremely detached fashion, and very, very stark.
If you are interested in seeing how the wars in the Middle East are viewed through the eyes of female soldiers, then this is a book that will very much interest you. I caution you, however, if you are looking for just an interesting story with a plot that's easy to follow. I don't really think there's a plot in this book - instead, it's like a patchwork quilt, with each square a portion of a story until the book (or quilt) as a whole is complete.
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from the girls' childhood through adulthood. In each fragment, the reader is given a glimpse of what is going on - and that glimpse could be describing a place or job, it could be delving into the mind and thoughts of the girl it's focused on, or it could be a third party narrator talking about the ramifications of a certain action and what is going on in the outside world. Regardless of how the narration style is, each snippet of the story is powerful, written in an extremely detached fashion, and very, very stark.
If you are interested in seeing how the wars in the Middle East are viewed through the eyes of female soldiers, then this is a book that will very much interest you. I caution you, however, if you are looking for just an interesting story with a plot that's easy to follow. I don't really think there's a plot in this book - instead, it's like a patchwork quilt, with each square a portion of a story until the book (or quilt) as a whole is complete.
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LibraryThing member EpicTale
I hoped that I would like "The People of Forever..." (TPF) but, in the end, I did not. Yes, the author's voice is fresh and penetrating. But she draws her characters in crayon and charcoal rather than in fine detail. While I was interested in witnessing the three protagonists (Lea, Avishag, and
It's a personal quirk, maybe, but as a reader I need to come to like or at least understand the main characters of a book -- and, in this case, I never got there. The three protagonists turned out to be inscrutable, poorly-adjusted head cases. Did they turn out that way because of what they saw and experienced as conscripted soldiers in the IDF, or did their service merely enforce their essence? If the protagonists achieved personal growth (beyond adopting adult habits and behaviors), it eluded me.
A a prose stylist, moreover, I thought that Boinjiu's writing fell well short of satisfying. Her writing can be disarmingly direct (reminding me just a little of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"), but not evocative. At times, TPF seemed like a series of set pieces and sketches -- some good, but many not -- awkwardly stitched together. Taken as a whole, the narrative failed to hang together. Indeed, it was kind of a mess. The book's disjointedness left me wondering whether short stories might be a more effective mechanism for this author, at least at this moment of her still-early career.
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Yael) grow from teens into young adults, they did so without also garnering my sympathy or revealing themselves as complete people. It's a personal quirk, maybe, but as a reader I need to come to like or at least understand the main characters of a book -- and, in this case, I never got there. The three protagonists turned out to be inscrutable, poorly-adjusted head cases. Did they turn out that way because of what they saw and experienced as conscripted soldiers in the IDF, or did their service merely enforce their essence? If the protagonists achieved personal growth (beyond adopting adult habits and behaviors), it eluded me.
A a prose stylist, moreover, I thought that Boinjiu's writing fell well short of satisfying. Her writing can be disarmingly direct (reminding me just a little of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"), but not evocative. At times, TPF seemed like a series of set pieces and sketches -- some good, but many not -- awkwardly stitched together. Taken as a whole, the narrative failed to hang together. Indeed, it was kind of a mess. The book's disjointedness left me wondering whether short stories might be a more effective mechanism for this author, at least at this moment of her still-early career.
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LibraryThing member KarenAJeff
I enjoyed learning more about life in Israel, and the mandatory military service, but the writing style just didn't do it for me.
LibraryThing member hscherry
I really struggled with this book. The writing style is frustrating - jumping around both from character to character and also in time. It's also repetitive in the way it's written. Just couldn't get on with it.
LibraryThing member mcelhra
This book made me profoundly grateful that I live in a country without mandatory military service. I’m thankful for all the people in my country who serve voluntarily. Imagine living in a place where almost all of the adults, men and women, had served in the military and had their personalities
All of the women are deeply and understandably affected by their service in the military. I was haunted by this book and these women. After reading it, I felt like I understood a little bit more about what it’s like to live in a country where everyone is on edge most of the time, waiting for the next suicide bombing or whatnot. Luckily, there were a few wonderfully dry, cynical, humorous lines interspersed here and there that kept this book from being too over the top depressing. If you are a fan of experimental style literary fiction, I recommend this book for you.
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and attitudes shaped by that. Ms Boianjiu spent two years in the Israeli Defense Forces s herself so I’m assuming that her portrayal of what life is like for women in the IDF is fairly accurate. The author has a unique writing style – somewhat detached prose that can come off as slightly pretentious at times but was beautiful most of the time. The narration alternates between the three women and at times I was confused as to whose turn it was -often the narrator is not named until a few pages into a chapter.All of the women are deeply and understandably affected by their service in the military. I was haunted by this book and these women. After reading it, I felt like I understood a little bit more about what it’s like to live in a country where everyone is on edge most of the time, waiting for the next suicide bombing or whatnot. Luckily, there were a few wonderfully dry, cynical, humorous lines interspersed here and there that kept this book from being too over the top depressing. If you are a fan of experimental style literary fiction, I recommend this book for you.
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LibraryThing member ashergabbay
Shani Boianjiu is a young Israeli author who wrote a book, in English, about her military service: “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid”. The book is the story about three friends – Yael, Avishag and Lea – who grew up together in a small village in northern Israel. When they get drafted to
I bought this book because of the excellent reviews it received. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete it. I tried really hard, but the ramblings of Boianjiu were so boring I just couldn’t take it. I felt like I was reading the diary of a teenager, and a tedious one at that.
Serves me right. I should have followed my instincts. When I read reviews that say things like “a distinct new voice in literature” I become suspicious. Boianjiu’s awful book proves my instincts are correct.
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the army, their lives change, but in different ways. Yael trains infantry soldiers to shoot; Avishag stands guard in border crossings; Lea checks Palestinians entering Israel to work. As young women they talk about boys and worry about their future.I bought this book because of the excellent reviews it received. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete it. I tried really hard, but the ramblings of Boianjiu were so boring I just couldn’t take it. I felt like I was reading the diary of a teenager, and a tedious one at that.
Serves me right. I should have followed my instincts. When I read reviews that say things like “a distinct new voice in literature” I become suspicious. Boianjiu’s awful book proves my instincts are correct.
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LibraryThing member cmlloyd67
Some books require work to read. They test your mind. Retrain it. Force you to think a little differently. Like learning a new language. While others are easier...you barely have to work at it, you can skim whole paragraphs and still know what's happening and often finish in a day, turning pages
It is not a page-turner. It will not keep you up late at night reading. But you won't forget it five minutes later. It's not plot-driven, more character driven, and the characters are complicated and not always easy to like or identify with. They feel real. The story feels real as well. As if it is non-fiction not fiction. You feel as if you are there in the desert, looking at the olive trees. Not gazing safely through a glass at them.
It requires slow digestion and pulls you deep inside another person's perspective - with a stream of consciousness style that takes a while to get into the rhythm of, like learning a new language or a new composition of music. But it does require the right mood and frame of mind. It's also the type of book that works very well in Book clubs and English Lit courses - much to chew on.
Shani Boianjiu is quite ambitious. She plays with time and point of view. Her novel is told in various points of view and perspectives. The first portion in first person, the second in third person, and then back again. It's a tale told by multiple voices not just one, and as a result we see multiple perspectives on the central topic - which is what it is like to live on the West Bank of Israel in the early 21st Century during multiple mini-battles and a hard won truces. And her styles vary depending on the point of view she is in and when she is in it. She writes in the voice of the character without ever once falling into the trap of dialect or phonetics. You hear her characters speaking in your head.
The title of the book is from a bumper sticker one of the character's fathers see on the car in front of him - it is a metaphor for these characters lives - what it is like to live in Israel. It's like when you drive down the road and you see a weird bumper sticker in front of you and think, dang, that's my life, exactly. Here it is told in much the same way. The book is in a hyper-realistic post-modern style - depicting the harsh reality of Israel without the rose-colored glasses. Shani tells it like it is. No small detail is spared.
We are pulled into the lives of three women, from the age of 16, when they are still in school, to the age of 23, a year or two after they've finished their tour of duty in the Israeli Armed Forces. Lea, Yael, and Avishag. They come from different ethnicities, Yemen, Iraq, Eucador...but all are Jewish and all Israeli. They are friends in school, and their friendships change during the period of service, they fall in and out of them. Through them we see first hand what it is like to be female in this environment. How far we've come and how far we have yet to go. While they've been granted the right to serve in the armed forces, they are regulated boring, mindless jobs, while their male counterparts fight and die, often resenting them. In one chapter, after they've finished serving, male soliders take them captive and punish them for not being part of the War. It's a weird chapter that is told in a stream of consciousness almost surreal style that requires re-reading to determine what occurred and is in the first person narrative. Through it, the writer makes clear how traumatized and confused the narrator is, hence the surreal telling.
The book did not move me emotionally. There's an emotional distance or coldness in the telling. The writer has a "matter-of-fact" style to her writing that makes it difficult to related to her characters. You feel as if you are at arms length and perhaps that is for the best. Towards the end, it did begin to move and haunt me. For I found myself thinking, but for the grace of God, go I.
These women's lives are far from easy. But they suffer through with a bored pathos bordering on apathy.
It's almost as if they are asking towards the end is there any reason for this, any meaning here?
And perhaps what they fear most is the lack of it, the meaninglessness, the emptiness...that their lives are an emotional and spiritual desert. If this is true, what in fact are they fighting for?
And are they forever, and do they really want to be?
Not a book I'll forget any time soon. In some respects more horrifying due to its basis in reality than any horror novel I've read. The characters seem to have last their souls by the end of the novel, and are fighting with a listless sluggishness to get it back again. What an endless war does to us, what endless fighting for a cause we no longer understand, whose meaning seems to have ebbed ageas ago...and how constantly demonizing the enemy begins to chip away at us - is no better expressed than through these pages. It's a "Heart of Darkness" for the modern age.
Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart or hard of mind.
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rapidly as if you are watching a tv show or movie and not reading or thinking at all, just gazing through a glass. This book is the former, not the later.It is not a page-turner. It will not keep you up late at night reading. But you won't forget it five minutes later. It's not plot-driven, more character driven, and the characters are complicated and not always easy to like or identify with. They feel real. The story feels real as well. As if it is non-fiction not fiction. You feel as if you are there in the desert, looking at the olive trees. Not gazing safely through a glass at them.
It requires slow digestion and pulls you deep inside another person's perspective - with a stream of consciousness style that takes a while to get into the rhythm of, like learning a new language or a new composition of music. But it does require the right mood and frame of mind. It's also the type of book that works very well in Book clubs and English Lit courses - much to chew on.
Shani Boianjiu is quite ambitious. She plays with time and point of view. Her novel is told in various points of view and perspectives. The first portion in first person, the second in third person, and then back again. It's a tale told by multiple voices not just one, and as a result we see multiple perspectives on the central topic - which is what it is like to live on the West Bank of Israel in the early 21st Century during multiple mini-battles and a hard won truces. And her styles vary depending on the point of view she is in and when she is in it. She writes in the voice of the character without ever once falling into the trap of dialect or phonetics. You hear her characters speaking in your head.
The title of the book is from a bumper sticker one of the character's fathers see on the car in front of him - it is a metaphor for these characters lives - what it is like to live in Israel. It's like when you drive down the road and you see a weird bumper sticker in front of you and think, dang, that's my life, exactly. Here it is told in much the same way. The book is in a hyper-realistic post-modern style - depicting the harsh reality of Israel without the rose-colored glasses. Shani tells it like it is. No small detail is spared.
We are pulled into the lives of three women, from the age of 16, when they are still in school, to the age of 23, a year or two after they've finished their tour of duty in the Israeli Armed Forces. Lea, Yael, and Avishag. They come from different ethnicities, Yemen, Iraq, Eucador...but all are Jewish and all Israeli. They are friends in school, and their friendships change during the period of service, they fall in and out of them. Through them we see first hand what it is like to be female in this environment. How far we've come and how far we have yet to go. While they've been granted the right to serve in the armed forces, they are regulated boring, mindless jobs, while their male counterparts fight and die, often resenting them. In one chapter, after they've finished serving, male soliders take them captive and punish them for not being part of the War. It's a weird chapter that is told in a stream of consciousness almost surreal style that requires re-reading to determine what occurred and is in the first person narrative. Through it, the writer makes clear how traumatized and confused the narrator is, hence the surreal telling.
The book did not move me emotionally. There's an emotional distance or coldness in the telling. The writer has a "matter-of-fact" style to her writing that makes it difficult to related to her characters. You feel as if you are at arms length and perhaps that is for the best. Towards the end, it did begin to move and haunt me. For I found myself thinking, but for the grace of God, go I.
These women's lives are far from easy. But they suffer through with a bored pathos bordering on apathy.
It's almost as if they are asking towards the end is there any reason for this, any meaning here?
And perhaps what they fear most is the lack of it, the meaninglessness, the emptiness...that their lives are an emotional and spiritual desert. If this is true, what in fact are they fighting for?
And are they forever, and do they really want to be?
Not a book I'll forget any time soon. In some respects more horrifying due to its basis in reality than any horror novel I've read. The characters seem to have last their souls by the end of the novel, and are fighting with a listless sluggishness to get it back again. What an endless war does to us, what endless fighting for a cause we no longer understand, whose meaning seems to have ebbed ageas ago...and how constantly demonizing the enemy begins to chip away at us - is no better expressed than through these pages. It's a "Heart of Darkness" for the modern age.
Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart or hard of mind.
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LibraryThing member LoveAtFirstBook
I loved The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu. This book was about a few teenage girls in Israel who enter the Israeli army and go their separate ways. Shani tells the story of each girl individually, as well as the story of the friends as a whole.
The People of Forever was dark at
My sister spent a few months volunteering in Israel, and during that time, she spent one week training with the Israeli army (see how cute she looks as a military girl?).
For the full review, visit Love at First Book
The People of Forever was dark at
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times and enlightening, too. But it holds a special place in my heart because of my connection to Israel.My sister spent a few months volunteering in Israel, and during that time, she spent one week training with the Israeli army (see how cute she looks as a military girl?).
For the full review, visit Love at First Book
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LibraryThing member Jayeless
There's so much about this book that's fascinating and really unique, so I have to give it four stars even if the wheels came off towards the end and the book got weird and disturbing and there was no dramatic climax of any kind. By that point I was already reading it more as a short story
The People of Forever are not Afraid is a book that follows three teenage girls from the same desolate northern Israeli town as they're thrust from their mundane, boring schoolkid lives into the military machine, and then their struggle to readjust to civilian life afterwards.
Shani Boianjiu's depictions of young adult life in Israel are unflinching and unsympathetic. Before I started, I'd been concerned that this book might offer a highly romanticised glimpse of what it's like to serve in the IDF, and I was relieved that it doesn't at all. Boianjiu's concern is not justifying anything the IDF does (and nor is it to condemn them, either); what she sets out to do is just depict what it's like to be an 18 or 19-year-old girl engulfed by this massive institution, and that's what makes this such an interesting book.
The book's trio of protagonists – Yael, Avishag and Lea – begin the book in the final year of high school. Yael narrates this first chapter, and introduces the other two girls. Avishag, her best friend, had a brother who killed himself shortly after completing his military service. Lea used to be another friend of theirs, but then ditched them to become “popular”. It's a curious mix of familiar teen drama tropes and the Israeli reality of militarism and death.
Naturally, the girls are assigned to different sections of the IDF. Avishag joins the IDF's only all-female combat division, which is stationed at the long-peaceful Egyptian border. Yael becomes a weapons instructor at a military base near Hebron. Lea is – much to her disgust – made to join the military police and sent to man a checkpoint in the West Bank, before a traumatic incident there prompts her to sign up for officer school instead.
The book takes the form of a series of vignettes, some of which are told from the perspectives of one-off characters outside the main trio. In general, the earlier ones are more focused and powerful while the coherency drops of dramatically towards the end. They explore many aspects of military life as well as the multitude of social issues Israel faces. Some examples that stick out in my memory would include:
· Yael describing with amusement how the Palestinian boys from the local village keep stealing small things from her base – a helmet here, a tin of moisturiser there, or some signs – in acts of harmless, petty resistanceand then how Boris, who couldn't even shoot until she taught him, killing one of these Palestinian boys in what Yael feels is an act of cold blood
· Avishag's job, for a while, being to sit for hours at a time staring at a computer monitor showing a small stretch of the border fence with Egypt, in case anyone approaches
· Israel's hostility to asylum seekers – to the point that while the IDF is too morally pure to shoot them dead before they can cross the border into Israel, they will happily alert the Egyptians to make sure it's done
· how thoroughly the IDF scrutinises the Palestinians who wish to cross into Israeli-controlled territory for work, searching for any minor excuse in their paperwork to deny entry… but at the same time, how little they care to stop the smuggling of trafficked women into Israel over the Egyptian border
· the intense ethnic stratification of Israel, even within the Jewish population: for example, Avishag's parents met when they arrived in Israel, and were forced to stand around naked while Israeli authorities hosed them down with DDT, convinced that these “dirty” immigrants from the Arab world had bodies crawling with diseases; or there's Lea, who acts like she's better than the other girls in their small town because unlike them, she looks European; or there's the fact that the “cushier” positions in the IDF tend to be reserved for Ashkenazim, with Mizrahim given the grunt work of combat roles and checkpoints
· how utterly boring most days in the IDF are – so many days filled with smoking, gossiping and sex – until, occasionally, a war comes and people die. More than once in this book, a onetime lover of one of the girls is killed in combat, and they just have to shrug that off and keep moving. There's a point where one of the girls is contemptuous of people who allow themselves the indulgence of mourning someone's death for years and years, because as far as she's concerned that's a luxury she's never had.
The protagonists aren't exactly the most likeable people, either as schoolgirls (where they amuse themselves playing mean-spirited games) or after their service, which they emerge from damaged in various ways (resulting in some highly disturbing late chapters). A refrain of the book is don't judge us, which really applies to Israel and the IDF as much as it does to the girls at the narrative's centre. The thing is, they can plea to not be judged… but it's you as the reader who has to decide whether that's reasonable or not.
As I said at the beginning, the book does kind of fall apart in the last few chapters, which covers the girls in their (mostly) post-military lives. There are still some interesting tidbits there, mostly about how the girls had no solid sense of identity before serving and have ended up almost stunted, unable to form real senses of self, afterwards. But there are also long boring passages that seem pointless and other passages that are extremely messed up, but also confusing and they don't even seem to go anywhere. There's a late chapter where the girls are called up as reservists in the next war, and end up simply being held hostage on base by a group of younger male soldiers, which is particularly baffling in this sense.
But overall, I have to give this book four stars for being such an interesting, insightful description of the military machine in Israel. If you are at all interested in this topic, then despite its messiness and flaws this is a really rewarding read.
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collection than as a novel, so I just shrugged that off as the last few chapters not really hitting the mark.The People of Forever are not Afraid is a book that follows three teenage girls from the same desolate northern Israeli town as they're thrust from their mundane, boring schoolkid lives into the military machine, and then their struggle to readjust to civilian life afterwards.
Shani Boianjiu's depictions of young adult life in Israel are unflinching and unsympathetic. Before I started, I'd been concerned that this book might offer a highly romanticised glimpse of what it's like to serve in the IDF, and I was relieved that it doesn't at all. Boianjiu's concern is not justifying anything the IDF does (and nor is it to condemn them, either); what she sets out to do is just depict what it's like to be an 18 or 19-year-old girl engulfed by this massive institution, and that's what makes this such an interesting book.
The book's trio of protagonists – Yael, Avishag and Lea – begin the book in the final year of high school. Yael narrates this first chapter, and introduces the other two girls. Avishag, her best friend, had a brother who killed himself shortly after completing his military service. Lea used to be another friend of theirs, but then ditched them to become “popular”. It's a curious mix of familiar teen drama tropes and the Israeli reality of militarism and death.
Naturally, the girls are assigned to different sections of the IDF. Avishag joins the IDF's only all-female combat division, which is stationed at the long-peaceful Egyptian border. Yael becomes a weapons instructor at a military base near Hebron. Lea is – much to her disgust – made to join the military police and sent to man a checkpoint in the West Bank, before a traumatic incident there prompts her to sign up for officer school instead.
The book takes the form of a series of vignettes, some of which are told from the perspectives of one-off characters outside the main trio. In general, the earlier ones are more focused and powerful while the coherency drops of dramatically towards the end. They explore many aspects of military life as well as the multitude of social issues Israel faces. Some examples that stick out in my memory would include:
· Yael describing with amusement how the Palestinian boys from the local village keep stealing small things from her base – a helmet here, a tin of moisturiser there, or some signs – in acts of harmless, petty resistance
· Avishag's job, for a while, being to sit for hours at a time staring at a computer monitor showing a small stretch of the border fence with Egypt, in case anyone approaches
· Israel's hostility to asylum seekers – to the point that while the IDF is too morally pure to shoot them dead before they can cross the border into Israel, they will happily alert the Egyptians to make sure it's done
· how thoroughly the IDF scrutinises the Palestinians who wish to cross into Israeli-controlled territory for work, searching for any minor excuse in their paperwork to deny entry… but at the same time, how little they care to stop the smuggling of trafficked women into Israel over the Egyptian border
· the intense ethnic stratification of Israel, even within the Jewish population: for example, Avishag's parents met when they arrived in Israel, and were forced to stand around naked while Israeli authorities hosed them down with DDT, convinced that these “dirty” immigrants from the Arab world had bodies crawling with diseases; or there's Lea, who acts like she's better than the other girls in their small town because unlike them, she looks European; or there's the fact that the “cushier” positions in the IDF tend to be reserved for Ashkenazim, with Mizrahim given the grunt work of combat roles and checkpoints
· how utterly boring most days in the IDF are – so many days filled with smoking, gossiping and sex – until, occasionally, a war comes and people die. More than once in this book, a onetime lover of one of the girls is killed in combat, and they just have to shrug that off and keep moving. There's a point where one of the girls is contemptuous of people who allow themselves the indulgence of mourning someone's death for years and years, because as far as she's concerned that's a luxury she's never had.
The protagonists aren't exactly the most likeable people, either as schoolgirls (where they amuse themselves playing mean-spirited games) or after their service, which they emerge from damaged in various ways (resulting in some highly disturbing late chapters). A refrain of the book is don't judge us, which really applies to Israel and the IDF as much as it does to the girls at the narrative's centre. The thing is, they can plea to not be judged… but it's you as the reader who has to decide whether that's reasonable or not.
As I said at the beginning, the book does kind of fall apart in the last few chapters, which covers the girls in their (mostly) post-military lives. There are still some interesting tidbits there, mostly about how the girls had no solid sense of identity before serving and have ended up almost stunted, unable to form real senses of self, afterwards. But there are also long boring passages that seem pointless and other passages that are extremely messed up, but also confusing and they don't even seem to go anywhere. There's a late chapter where the girls are called up as reservists in the next war, and end up simply being held hostage on base by a group of younger male soldiers, which is particularly baffling in this sense.
But overall, I have to give this book four stars for being such an interesting, insightful description of the military machine in Israel. If you are at all interested in this topic, then despite its messiness and flaws this is a really rewarding read.
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LibraryThing member LibroLindsay
This was a difficult book to piece together. There were times I really liked it, found it powerful and heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious, but other times I just couldn't make sense of it (what was up with that rape episode towards the end?). This is a bleak and often cryptic first endeavor,
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examining the damaging effects of the mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Force. It was difficult to distinguish the girls from one another sometimes, but their negotiation of youth to adulthood amid military service floored me. I've never read anything about the female perspective in military service and conflict, and I wonder if there's really even much out there on it. While this book was not without it's flaws, I'm really intrigued by Boianjiu's style and will certainly look out for her future work. Show Less
ISBN
0307955974 / 9780307955975