Reading Asian authors; this month Holy Land. Amos Oz was born In Jerusalem in 1939. He died in 2018. Black Box is the story of Illana, a divorced woman, remarried to Michel, a Moroccan devout Hebrew. The story is told through letters and telegrams (epistolary). Illana writes a letter to her ex husband and that starts a bunch of correspondence between Illana, the ex, the son, the step son, the husband, the lawyer, the sister. I like reading Oz but I don't find him exactly easy to read. There is a whole lot of stuff to digest. The use of letters allows the reader to know each character. Boaz the son of the ex husband is wild and hard to control as might be expected in a son whose father walks away from him. Boaz is the kinsmen redeemer in the Bible and in this story, Boaz does bring the characters together. Black box is an allusion to the box in planes that help decode what happens in the event of an accident. Alex represents the soldier, the man who did his mandatory service but left Israel to go to Chicago. Michel represents the immigrant who has come to Israel and wants to buy back the land from the Arabs. He has never served in the military or killed anyone. He is religious, Alex is not. The novel is set in the mid 70s before email, phones are unreliable and letter writing allows the person to talk to themselves before they actually send the letter. I would fault the excessively long letters as being hard to maintain interest at times but was the vehicle by which the author provided the reader with the information to be an informed reader.
Rating; Legacy 3.5 epistolary but nothing new and sometimes this doesn't work.
plot: 4
characters: 4, somewhat stereotyped but on purpose????
Readability: 3 nice prose but way to lengthy letters
Achievement: 3
Overall rating 3.5 ( )

Told in letter form, Black Box focuses on the broken relationship between Ilana and Alex, set in a broken country, Israel, where the deeply flawed personalities of the main characters often seem to reflect the flawed political and cultural structure of Israel.

The trigger that starts the novel is Boaz, the violent, unruly teenager son of Ilana and Alex. Ilana in Israel reaches out to her professor ex husband, Alex, to help. Initially recriminations fly back and forth, as do many lies. During the divorce there was even a question mark as to whether Alex is even the father of Boaz, given Ilana's promiscuousness. But whether this is true or not, Alex, not poor, does provide some money to help. Ilana's current very religious, right wing, husband, Michael, senses an opportunity, and demands a huge amount more (close to $200,000), and is given it. Is this some clever tactic from Alex to draw Ilana back into Alex's life, or are there are motives?

As the novel develops, everyone slowly changes, and, for Ilana and Alex at least, their lies dissolve and a new, deeper honesty emerges. Much of this honesty involves an analysis of their upbringing, the start of their marriage, and where and why everything went wrong. This brings them closer, and Michael, a rather petty, inconsistent man, is slowly left by the wayside.

Eventually Boaz finds peace, maturity and even wisdom, living on the old family estate of his father, and he is joined by Alex, possibly dying of cancer, and Ilana, there to find her own kind of peace, and to look after ailing Alex. From hatred and recriminations, Ilana and Alex now are close, loving, but not necessarily in a romantic way - there is something purer between them, amidst a deeper acceptance of life generally.

The novel explores, in minute detail, the way that lives can be burnt from the start, how people deceive and manipulate themselves and each other, and how we can change through circumstances. It plays on how religion can interact with all this, and how Israeli politics of the 1970's was a confusing and developing backdrop to personal lives.

Black Box is, at times, deeply moving, funny, thoughtful, real, and extremely closely observed. It is a book one is increasingly drawn into as the letters reveal more of the lives of the main characters. We are forced to question every line, though, given the propensity of characters to lie, and this only makes the novel more interesting. The structure and language of the novel are masterful, as the epistolary format feeds us just the right amount of plot snippets at just the right time, while it also highlights the different voices and forms of communication within it. ( )

This book took me a lot longer to finish than I expected... it’s very complex and not an easy read at all. An epistolary novel told in notes and letters between a divorced couple, her new husband, their teenager son, and some other characters, there is a lot going on here. Religious fanaticism, Israeli issues, war, marriage, family... it’s a lot, but it’s so well written, it’s absolutely worth the work. ( )

Primo libro letto di Amos Oz, forse non il migliore e comunque scritto in forma strana: tutto in forma epistolare, senza un dialogo se non quello via lettera. Bello lo svolgersi della trama, con Ilana che diviene pagina dopo pagina il protagonista principale della storia per poi rivelarsi all'ultima pagina per quello che rappresenta per i tre uomini della storia (i due mariti ed il figlio del primo). ( )

Interesting book. It's written in the form of letters between two former lovers, now divorced, who start writing to each other reviving their past, remembering their time together, talking about their separation with anger, nostalgia and love. ( )