שתהיי לי הסכין

Today I finished listening to the audiobook of שתהיי לי הסכין (Be My Knife) by David Grossman. I do not know what to sayyyyy.

It is an extremely unique book, definitely worth reading, and I really really loved most of it; as always with his books I'm not sure about the ending (although I actually think it works better than the endings of some of his other novels).

For most of the book I strongly identified with Yair (unfortunately for me 😛); on the other hand, there are some things about him that are really non-OK, and it bothers me that the book is like one ginormous "woman performs emotional labor for man"-fest. I know it's a little more complicated than that but I think that's in there too, and I'm not sure whether the book itself is critical of that or not (although I guess it basically is). I mean I guess also, relationships are complicated and problematic and people can get a lot out of them and be strongly sucked into them even when the participants are seriously flawed -- and also, it's OK and important for stories to also show the ugly parts of being human. But in some sense, I feel like this is one of the least optimistic of his books that I've read (and the gender aspect is probably the most disturbing aspect).

I guess to some extent I'm also trying to think about what I personally can or want to learn from the book, considering how strongly I identified with one of the main characters... I guess I'm just hoping that I am on the way to becoming not-Yair (or, maybe, grownup-and-new-and-improved-Yair at least).