Raced through this thin book of many short essays in record time, because I needed to complete it before my Hadassah book group met.

I shoehorned in this book between Robbie Robertson's "Testimony" and Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run". You might call it a short trip to Israel in between rowdy, stadium-sized, rock 'n' roll concerts.

A totally delightful book. The author's nature -- compassion and sarcasm, thoroughly mixed -- makes him a charming storyteller.

My favorite might be the last story "Pastrami". The author recounts how he, his wife, and their seven-year-old boy are in their car driving when an air raid siren goes off.

They do what they've been told to do. They pull over to the margin, get out of the car, and lie down on the road next to the car. Well, what they do is make a sandwich. The author's wife, Shira, lies on the ground. They put their boy in the middle. And the author lies on top. Well, he doesn't really lie on top of them. He puts his weight on his hands and knees, which begin to ache as time goes on. He has already let us know that he's overweight.

"Why are we doing this?" asks their child. "We're making a sandwich," he replies. "You're the pastrami in the middle."

After the air raid ends, they get back in the car. "Hey, that was kind of fun," remarks their child. "We can do it even if there's no air raid," says Shira.

How wise, how quick witted, how resilient.

And how brilliant Keret is, to make a story -- a funny story -- out of the intermittent terror that's part of life in Israel.