And It's a Good Thing that I Read it All (21 cents)

Not "The Emperor of Ocean Park", but David Grossman's "The Zig Zag Kid".

Grossman is an Israeli journalist/novelist who, despite his American sounding name, writes in Hebrew and is published here in translation. I had never read anything by him, and found a signed copy of this book at a used book store last week.

It is a novel, and a very unusual one. I am not sure if it was meant for an adult audience, or a younger audience. It is a coming of age fable, the story of young Nonny Feuerberg as he approaches his Bar Mitvah in the 1970s. (The book was written in the 1990s).

Nonny is sent out on an "adventure" by his father and his not-quite-step mother, a sort of scavenger hunt which starts on the Jerusalem-Haifa train, where one thing is supposed to lead to another. But it gets off-track, so to speak, very early, as Nonny is befriended by an older man acting as his guide, telling him that they are going to do woundrous things, and that he will be back home by Bar Mitzvah time. And, if he wants, he can go home any time he wants.

Problem is: this man is not part if the father's plan for his son, and the father (an Israeli policeman)puts out an APB, saying that his son has been kidnapped.

I don't want to give it away, but the adventures are exciting and not quite legal, and takes Nonny where he never imagined he could go.

For most of the book, I wondered why I was reading it at all. I thought it silly, but again I stuck with it (only half the size as the Carter book), and -- as coming of age fables tend to do -- everything turned out not only well, but exceedingly well. (Wish I could tell you more but, who knows, you just might read it.)

So, I think this is a wonderful book. What did it remind me of? Maybe Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. Maybe Coehlo's "The Alchemist". Maybe Yann Martel's "Life of Pi" (which I have not even read).