Tanks for the memoirs
See? I read fiction sometimes, too. I mean novels, of course. I can find plenty of fiction in the newspaper. Haw haw haw.
Matches is a semiautobiographical account of a short span of an American Israeli’s time in the IDF. Kaufman was careful not to glorify or dehumanize, and the novel feels warm and compassionate.
That said, I find myself wondering if it would have been better as a memoir. Perhaps some details he could not have divulged except as fiction, be it the specifics of a military operation or marital infidelity, but my only problem with the book is its lack of direction. There is very little in the way of a story arc, and while there is some character development, it is reported to us after the fact as background to the narrative. What is lacking in that area is made up for in authenticity, but I’m left not feeling as though I’ve read a story. It has no beginning or end, simply an earliest point and a latest point. It almost struck me as a long build-up to a poignant punchline at the end. But there is a lot more to it than that.
I started this novel very conflicted about Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Kaufman’s aim was not to make any moral judgment in the telling and he succeeded. I’m not any less conflicted having read Matches, but the question is (or the questions are) more vital, more human. Kaufman put faces to the news I read thousands of miles away, which is at once gratifying and troubling.
