Zeruya Shalev: Bits of Life

Zeruya Shalev has a lot of fans in Romania. A lot. And so, when she visited Bucharest, I just had to have a conversation with the beloved Israeli writer. We’ve talked about her characters, about family and the dramas within, about intimacy and happiness.

By Mihaela Frank

Published by ELLE Romania in March 2014

From the moment I learned about Zeruya Shalev's arrival in Romania to now, as I write these lines, our relationship has changed quite a bit. I first met the Israeli writer five years ago when she came to Romania to promote her novel "Husband and Wife," newly published by Polirom. I then invited her to a meeting with ELLE readers, and the evening was memorable: Zeruya won us over with her smile, the warm tone of her voice, and her intelligent and relaxed answers to our questions. As for the two of us, it was perfect chemistry. At parting, we promised to keep in touch, but we didn't quite keep our promise.

When I found out that Zeruya Shalev was among the guests of honor at the Bucharest International Literature Festival, I wrote her a cautious email, telling her that I was looking forward to seeing her again and that this time I wanted to interview her. This was necessary "by request": I was asked more than once—on Facebook or directly—when I would interview Zeruya Shalev. She replied to my email very promptly and warmly. We were set.

We met in the hotel where she stayed with her husband, writer Ayal Megged. They were traveling together and had a very tight schedule, and from Bucharest, they were to leave for a literature festival in Mexico. We hugged like two old friends, and she asked me what I had done in the last five years. Hmm… well, let's see: in short, I met my Prince Charming, we got married, and we have a three-year-old boy. As for her, she managed to fulfill her dream of adopting a child, so now she is a mother again: besides her teenage daughter, a little boy, now 7 years old, has entered her life. She confesses that it's harder than she imagined, but she doesn't complain. We got excited, laughed, rejoiced for each other, complimented & congratulated each other. Then we decided it was time to get down to business.

Although born into a family of writers, Zeruya Shalev did not debut very early. She was first attracted to poetry (which is still evident in her style today), but it was not until she was 34 that she finally debuted with the novel 'Love Life,' which immediately became a success—first nationally, then internationally.

Her talent is confirmed by every new book she publishes, and the number of fans steadily grows. Her narrative style, almost always an extremely intense monologue of the protagonist, has the gift, on the one hand of drawing the reader into the inner world of the characters, and on the other hand, of opening the door to the depths of their mind. It's like a "disease" you catch when you read Zeruya Shalev: you enter into a dialogue with that character, and then you slip into the same type of monologue with itself. I don't know how she does it, what she touches, but that's the effect.

I confess to Zeruya that I admire the way she manages to make her readers identify with her characters. And since her heroes are always in an existential crisis (a totally unhappy couple, a woman who decides to divorce, parents and children in conflict), you live all their dramas. The experience is painfully intense for the reader, so I can only imagine how emotional intensity of writing these books. Zeruya admits that sometimes it's painful for her. "It's an emotional challenge to go through all those processes of suffering, learning, maturing, through all those crises... It's not easy. It happened more than once that my children found me crying when they returned from school and asked me what happened. I told them nothing happened, but the woman I'm writing about is very unhappy. And they told me: 'What do you mean she's unhappy? You're the author, make her happy! You just have to write a paragraph about how she solved her problems, and everything becomes fine.' I had to explain to my daughter that I can't do that, that I can't create shortcuts for my characters' situations, and that they must go through their states themselves, even if it's not easy. Please believe me that I'm not a masochist or sadist, but it's my way of describing life realistically and, also, of giving my characters time to get to know themselves and face reality.”

And what forces us to know ourselves and see the truth more than a crisis? Not fun when you must go through it, but a godsend for writers! Zeruya agrees: "The crisis makes everything extreme, intense, and in such moments, I think the truth becomes clear. I don't want my characters to suffer, I really love them, but I think if they truly want to change something in their lives, in themselves, and this is the only way—at least the only way I know: that of facing the crisis. Each of my characters tries to make a change, and changes imply difficult periods.” As if she feels the need to apologize for the emotional charge in her books, she tells me to write that she wants to assure her readers that her characters do not suffer in vain, that it's a precious suffering because it's an opportunity for change. "I realize I'm talking about my characters as if I were their therapist—sometimes I think that should be my profession. I'm not strong enough to be a therapist though, because I would identify too much with my patients, but I at least I try to help my characters—and through them, my readers.”

As for readers reactions, who declare—everywhere in the world—that they recognize themselves in her characters, Zeruya admits that at first, she was surprised. "I had published 'Love Life' and didn't expect anyone to identify with my character—it's all so intense, so extreme, I even told Ayal [her suband] that. I didn't believe in myself at all and always wondered why I wrote this story, no one would like it. From time to time, Ayal would read a chapter that I gave him and always told me to continue, not to give up—he was very nice to me, and always encouraged me. When I started getting reactions from readers, although I was very happy, I couldn't explain it. But now, with more experience and more readers, I think the explanation lies in intimacy, in the fact that you enter someone else's life, where you can find yourself, or a part of yourself, or a part of someone you know. I think, in the end, there is something universal in intimacy—although it may sound paradoxical. And then you don't feel alone anymore.”

I can't help but ask Zeruya how she can imagine all those torrents of thoughts that invade her characters' minds. "After all," I say, "how do you know what that woman who's divorcing feels? You've been married to Ayal for so many years and you seem to have a happy marriage. Zeruya doesn't know how to explain exactly, but she assumes that when she writes it happens what happens with an actor, who identifies with his character. "When I write, a kind of internal metamorphosis occurs, I focus and become that person I'm writing about. Whether my character is a woman who is divorcing, a man, or an old woman on her deathbed, I feel that I am that person. I think we are all able to feel anything, just through the power of imagination. We don't have to experience everything. Of course, my own experiences are there, from time to time, but I don't have to live my characters' experiences to feel them.”

However, she confesses that she divorced many years ago. "But when I wrote 'Thera' it had already been about 15 years since that episode and I didn't remember much, so I didn't use my own experience. After so many years, you don't know in detail what it was then, and the truth is lost in memory. She tells me that although she has had several relationships and is in her second marriage, she doesn't write about herself because it doesn't seem interesting to her. "I prefer to create something new rather than write about what happened to me. For me, writing means living something other than what I have already lived."

Among the personal experiences of Zeruya Shalev never recounted in a book is a very difficult moment in her life. On January 29, 2004, when she was returning from kindergarten where she had left her daughter, Zeruya was the victim of a terrorist attack—a bus that was passing by exploded. Ten people died; many others were injured. Zeruya Shalev stated in many interviews that she did not want this incident to intervene in her writing at all. I'm curious to find out if she was working on a particular book at that time. She tells me that she was working on 'Thera' and that she went through a tough post-traumatic period when she couldn't write at all. "I was in bed for half a year—for the first time in my life, I had a lot of time. She tells me how all her friends came to see her, many of them writers, and how they told her: "Now you have all the time to finish your book!"

"I tried to write, but it was impossible. I couldn't even understand what my book was about. I couldn't read what I had already written, I couldn't relate to it, as if someone else had written everything. I was so detached from that book!” She realized that writing was not therapy for her and that she couldn't write just to fill her time. "Writing is a very serious matter for me. I need a lot of strength and concentration, so I can't do it if I'm sick. I had to stop, and I didn't try to write at all during that period. I remember so well the day I was able to put my feet on the ground, then how slowly I started to walk again, to sit on a chair, to sit in front of the computer. Only then did I open the document and continue the sentence I had left unfinished as if nothing had happened. I felt a sense of victory, on the one hand, and on the other hand, I understood what writing means to me and that it's not just a hobby.”

Zeruya Shalev is a delicate, shy woman (although she manages to hide her shyness quite well, you see it in the way she reacts when you compliment her). She is a perfect conversation partner (both warm and intelligent). She hates politics and... sun (yes, sunt!). She prefers with no hesitation a gray, cloudy day--clouds have fascinated her since she was a child. She would have liked to live in a place full of snow—not that she doesn't love her country or that it would ever cross her mind to leave Israel. She tells me that when you live in a country invaded by the sun for ten months a year, clouds seem much more beautiful. Ads for politics, Zeruya says she hates "the vulgar political atmosphere in her country."

Zeruya’s books have always been apolitical—she has often stated that she prefers to focus on internal realities, which prove to be universal, rather than external ones. And yet, her latest book – ‘The Remains of Love’ -  seems to show some clues about her political views. "You're right," she admits. What made her change her mind, then?

"I think my characters forced me to do it—I always try to listen to them. Writing is not just about speaking but also about listening a lot. In my last book, for some characters, it was relevant to express their feelings about Israel, about what's happening around them. So I felt I had to open more windows to Israeli realities. She tells me she tried to render situations as nuanced as possible, not in black and white. "It's easy to say that Palestinians suffer and it's the Israelis' fault. I tried to show that things are much more complex and that we all suffer. It's a double tragedy. When politics interferes with my characters' lives, I can't stand aside, I must show how things are. Because then it's not about politics, but about their lives. In the case of Avner, for example, a human rights lawyer (and a character I got very attached to), I tried to describe his attitude towards the state of Israel—and here I think I put most of my voice: a combination of pity, disappointment, shame and pride, hope, compassion... A lot of mixed feelings.”

Family is present in all of Zeruya Shalev's books, and the complicated relationships between parents, children, and spouses are dissected with great accuracy. The empathy with which she describes the inner life of children and how they manage to understand the world of adults and communicate despite their infantile vocabulary is downright touching. Zeruya thinks that family is "the most fascinating microcosm” and, in any case, it's the thing that influences us the most in life.

"The family we come from completely influences our lives, and later, the family we build for our children influences their lives. It's an endless process, which I feel I can explore until the end of my days. I remember when I was a child and stayed overnight at a friend's house, how fascinated I was by what was happening in their family—I was like a little spy, trying to listen to conversations between parents, brothers, and sisters, to see what they eat, how they cook, if they turn on the radio in the morning, what they wear—any detail interested me! I still think all these things are important because they make us what we are, after all. I think the intimate world of each of us is created and dominated by the most intimate relationships between parents, brothers, sisters, partners, and children. They are the mirror of our lives. And I think it's important to explore these relationships. For me, writing about family is more important than writing about war. People who make wars are formed and dominated by this microcosm which is the family. This is where it all begins.”

The families in Zeruya Shalev's books are all, more or less, unhappy—which, after all, makes them worthy of being the subject of a novel. And yet, each family is born, in principle, out of love and begins with good intentions, even if often things do not go as we would like. I ask her where she thinks we go wrong. "What can I say?... I'm not an expert on this, I can only observe. I think we have too high expectations of our partners and of our children. We should lower the bar and care less about what we can get from them. What we give makes us much happier than what we receive. Even if you received everything you wanted, you still wouldn't be satisfied, you would discover that it doesn't make you happy. I think it's in our nature.”

She stops somehow embarrassed, and tells me that it would be more appropriate to talk about herself instead of coming up with general opinions. "Personally, it took me years to understand that taking care of someone else makes me much happier than taking care of myself. To give someone a gift pleases me more than receiving a gift. Similarly, when we become parents, we learn everything slowly. Love, life as a couple, life as a parent are such important things—and yet we don't learn anything about all this at school. Sure, we all have family experience, but sometimes it can be very traumatic. Or it's never good enough. And when we start our own family life, we want to correct everything and we make, in turn, mistakes—it's like a vicious circle from which some manage to escape, but many cannot. And I also believe—and this is something I've learned from my characters—that sometimes it's a matter of decision. The decision to go in a certain direction. The decision to be, if not happy, at least content. To take on life as it is and to do everything you can in the given circumstances, even if not everything is perfect. This is a big step. To not feel sorry for what we don't have and to try to improve what we have.”

Success has somewhat changed Zeruya Shalev's life. When I ask her if people recognize her on the street, she tells me yes.  It doesn't bother her, because she loves to meet people and learn from them. Success has also allowed her to work less. She gave up her job as an editor at Keshet publishing house, where she worked for many years. Instead, she gives lectures—which leaves her more time for writing.

"I wouldn't say I can live comfortably, just from my books. It's not a stable profession -- you never know how your next book will be received. But I'm happy that I have more time and that I get all kinds of invitations to festivals or to promote my books.” As for the writing, things are different: "I can't say that success has changed me in any way. I haven't reached that self-assurance; I still have doubts and I feel small. Every sentence I write feels like my first sentence, it's the same struggle as it was in the beginning. Maybe it's even harder, because of the expectations. But I can't complain. I've been lucky and I'm truly grateful.”