Eden, the last book of Y ael Hadaya will not leave you indifferent. with a sharp scalpel Y ael carves the characters who compile the plot, in a way you can see clearly Alona, Mark, Rony, Maya and Ido, Ruven and Rina, Eli and Dafna ...
By the time you get to the middle of the book you really know them, and if you would have gotten to Eden you would probably engage a light conversation in Rivka's old grocery store...
Well, Eden is a small settlement close to
petah-tikva (Israel) , whos old inhabitance are getting fewer as more young, well established families make it their home, the new israely dream: a house in the country and a 4X4 jeep as a hot status simbel. the writer focuses the plot on two couples around age 40, who experience an internal crisis in their relationships, each from his own personal point of view.
Mark and Alona Segel are a married couple living apart, parents to two small children.
Eli and D afna Nahmias are a couple without children who are only finishing their exhausting and so far unsuccessful fertilizations treatments.
The one who's carving the fate of the characters, without her nor their know so, is R ony, the daughter of M ark from his first marriage. R ony is a 16+ year old teenager, she is in a haste to mature and interprets the ticket into the adult world as an expertise in sex.
Rony has a sensitive soul and a complexed inner world, she gives her body as sacrifice on the altar of mental torment.
For Rony , 'screwing' is the way to polish the soul, and U ri Broitner her love, would have her only if she reaches the level of sexual experience she thinks he expects, only this way he would not see her as a child, but as a mature and experienced woman. And in her haste-flight, R ony doesnt hesitate to have sex with Eli Nahmias, the so called yippie lawyer. Eli understands -he is after all a lawyer- that his chriminal relationship with R ony draws him further but to discover which life he wants and with whom.
Through Rony unveils the relationship of Alona and Mark.
Rony lives with both of them on and off and for Alona Rony reflects the spitting image of Mark, an image she herself feared at times, and had difficulty accepting, which eventually led her to break up with him.
The drama protruded in the end of the book, makes all the characters to accept decisions and end the time-out they had taken in their lives, the time-out which ends arbitrarily by nature who determines facts which make you choose the path in which youproceed.