This is How We Talk

A novel of Tel-Aviv

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Pub Date 11 May 2017 | Archive Date 08 Mar 2022

Description

While life in Tel-Aviv, Israel’s famed party town, is punctuated by hedonism and bitter regret, two young Israelis, Lia and Yonatan, are struggling to save their relationship for the sake of their child.

Around them, the city is constantly evolving and expanding upwards, full to bursting with Jews and Arabs, rich and poor, refugees and addicts. As Lia’s and Yonatan’s lives spiral out of control, and with war never far away, Tel-Aviv convulses in uncertainty and social unrest.

This is How We Talk tells of the lives and loves of Tel-Aviv’s young generation with a searing honesty; their relationships with each other and their home in a country at war with its neighbours, and with itself.

While life in Tel-Aviv, Israel’s famed party town, is punctuated by hedonism and bitter regret, two young Israelis, Lia and Yonatan, are struggling to save their relationship for the sake of their...


Advance Praise

‘In This Is How We Talk by Julian Furman, two Israeli thirty-somethings – Yonatan and Lia – are desperately trying to salvage some love from their deteriorating relationship as well as meaning for their existence in a country at war with its neighbours and at war with itself. As important as the two main protagonists is Tel-Aviv, a city that is forever expanding outwards and upwards, a melting pot of the rich and dispossessed, the immigrant and the sabra, the religious and the secular, the ancient and the modern, the Jew and the Arab. The author is equally at home steering the reader along the tree-lined central boulevards into the sleek nightclubs and up into the sea-view towers of the wealthy, as he is among the darker areas of the city frequented by the drug addicts and the homeless or beyond to the outlying suburbs where the Arab population live. This is a stylish, assured and compelling debut.’ J David Simons, author of The Credit DraperAn Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful and A Woman of Integrity

‘In This Is How We Talk by Julian Furman, two Israeli thirty-somethings – Yonatan and Lia – are desperately trying to salvage some love from their deteriorating relationship as well as meaning for...


Available Editions

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ISBN 9781911332282
PRICE £9.99 (GBP)

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Average rating from 9 members


Featured Reviews

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I will definitely look for more to read by Julian Furman, he is clearly a talented author, with an intriguing family background. This is a fractured story about toxic love, that centers upon estranged narrating partners Yonatan and Lia and their failing marriage; but also involves her siblings Sharon and Michael, their significant others, and everybody's hidden secrets. The sliding back and forth between present and past events has become a common literary technique, but here I felt it obscured the initial cause of Yonatan and Lia's marital discord. After all, they seem so perfectly suited to each other, both professing such devotion to their baby while unable to prevent themselves from indulging in wildly irresponsible behavior that leads them both into a bloody vortex of chaos, not to mention wallowing in squalid filth, like literally on the floor, in public restrooms.

Furman beautifully portrays Tel Aviv as an exciting city wracked by racial tension, adolescent rebellion, and political upheaval; but then also it seems to be the smallest city ever, as when Lia (who is supposed to be sitting shiva for her dead brother at her parents' house) somehow happens to happen upon her husband and their baby son in a random plaza. Even more coincidentally, they are also joined at this precise moment in this particular square by Milli, the very character Yonatan's wronged so profoundly that his world's been entirely upended!

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An evening in Tel Aviv, Yonatan finds himself outside his home without money and no idea where to go. He thinks deep into the city’s nightlife, with alcohol, women and drugs. How could he end here in the streets between party-goers and protesters? He once had a plan, for the time after his gap year after the IDF, a career as a photographer, a loving wife and a son. But also Lia, his wife, has to find her place and has to cope not only with the demons of her past, but also with the picture she had of her brother. Just like her sister Sharon who tries to forget and not confront all the negative events that happen in her life by filling her day with work.

I struggled a bit with the novel at first. The narrative structure which always alternates between the present and different points in the past was not very easy to sort out at first. However, this gave it a lot more dynamics and made it actually livelier. I found Yonatan’s and Lia’s story quite interesting, especially having two opposite characters approaching the same point of culmination. I can see what the other two characters contributed to the story, but I could have done without them.

What I appreciated most was the fact how Julian Fuhrman caught the atmosphere of Israel. On the one hand, the carefree and light-hearted nightlife in which you can indulge and forget. On the other hand, being threatened by war and confronted with actual bombings is also a part of their life. Likewise, the question if, as an Israeli, you can befriend an Arab – to which extend do political implications limit your personal sphere? The necessary and mandatory service in the army and the need to flee from this time after having completed the IDF – a constant crucial test of the love for your country. The protesters and their fight for affordable housing and food, it was reported worldwide about this movement and Fuhrman thus integrated very mundane aspects in the novel which rendered the characters and the plot authentic. In the centre, of course, the basic conflict between Lia and Yonatan. How can you love joyfully in those circumstances and make you love last?

A novel which traps the attitude towards life of a whole generation.

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