Moja pierwsza książka Etgara Kereta i na pewno nie ostatnia! Zachwycił mnie swoim humorem, wyobraźnią, językiem.. wszystkim! Nie mogę się doczekać, aż sięgnę po jego inne dzieła.

While I do appreciate those who can find humor in the mundane, or even heartbreaking, instances of daily life, this book was full of anecdotes that were so absurd that they often felt more like caricature than memoir. There were a couple of vignettes that I enjoyed and even found profound, but for the most part I was too distracted by the overly-witty dialogue to really get into this one.

"...Gradually, my wife also began to realize the advantages of our shabby existence. After she found a not exactly reliable news site warning that Iran might already have nuclear weapons, she decided it was time to stop washing dishes. 'There's nothing more frustrating than getting nuked while you're putting the soap in the dishwasher,' she explained. 'From now on, we only wash dishes on an immediate-need basis.' This 'If I'm going up in flames anyway, then I won't go as a sucker' philosophy extended well beyond the dishwasher edict."

This memoir reads as a collection of short stories. Etgar Keret looks at seven years of his life, intertwining stories from his family history. It's lighter in a sense because it's written with humor, but that didn't downplay the harsh realities of his life in the Middle East. I lol'd a lot.

The Seven Good Years is a delightful collection of super short stories from the Israeli author Etgar Keret. Though some of the stories deal with traumatic topics - war, Holocaust survival, anti-Semitism, and grief - Keret finds a way to reframe them as events of curiosity, survival, and love. It is almost as if Keret refuses to forget the little moments in a day that make you chuckle and shake your head in amusement. Instead, he latches on and perfectly distills and expands the wonder of that moment.

I first heard Keret's stories on This American Life, and I found this collection every bit as wonderful as my introduction to his writing. I'm admittedly uneducated about Israeli and Jewish culture, so I didn't fully understand all of the references. Still, I think this book can be summarized by a quote from Keret's wife: "Our life is one thing, and you always reinvent it to be something else more interesting. That's what writers do, right?" A few favorites: "Big Baby," "Yours, Insincerely," "Flight Meditation," "Strange Bedfellows," "Fat Cats," Ground Up," "Love at First Whiskey," "Accident," and "Pastrami."

While I read this short book, I alternated between a big smile on my face and a tear in my eye. Keret's memoir takes us from the birth of his son on the day of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, to sitting shiva for his deceased father within seven years. He captures the absurdity and joy of everyday life lived in a land where annihilation from terrorist attacks is an ever-present danger. The saying 'great things come in small packages' certainly applies here. I'll be reading more by this author!

I was brought to tears by one story, which is a pretty good ratio!

That joke aside, it's a collection of very short stories. Most were a bit too glurgey for my tastes, but I could see how they could be appreciated by someone with different tastes. It's great little short stories that all do different things. And I expect that if I reread it 10 years down the road, an entirely different story will be the one that makes me cry.

A fun and insightful little memoir. Enjoyable and fast read.

I was not previously familiar with this author and plan to remedy that post haste. His stories are sparkling gems, funny and wry. It cut deep.