Though the three novellas of Hedaya's Housebroken
(2001) are funny and accomplished, they do not prepare one for the depth of her new novel, a slow-motion Tel Aviv love story, in which a new couple finds their relationship haunted by past affairs. Yonatan Luria is a famous, 50-ish writer whose novels are less successful each time out, and he has only begun to try to work again, two years after his wife's death; first time novelist Shira Klein is so surprised by the success of her book that she calls upon her boring ex, who sustained her while she wrote it, to see if he's still available. Hedaya expertly details Yonatan's and Shira's varying and more or less depressing circumstances until they meet at a dinner party, and the usual skittish evasions of courtship and early dating ensue. Hedaya has an unerring sense of the fear involved in attempting intimacy, and her book contains one of the best descriptions of bad sex with the wrong person (in an attempt to avoid the right person) ever. By the end, hope reigns for this accidental family-in-the-making. Agent, Deborah Harris.
(Sept. 1)
