The Drive

March 16, 2020
Assulin’s poignant if flawed debut follows an Israeli soldier’s struggles to deal with his “soul-crushing” time in the Israel Defense Forces. The unnamed soldier and his father drive from Haifa up the Coastal Highway for an appointment with the Mental Health Officer. As they travel, the soldier reflects on the circumstances that have led him to this point. Having been assigned to intelligence, the soldier hasn’t seen combat, but his reaction to the environment of the base causes him to feel like he is suffocating, and to contemplate hurting himself. He considers throwing himself in front of a vehicle or asking a friend to smash his hand in a car door, so he can have a long period of sick leave. While on base, the soldier finds comfort from reading the Psalms and regularly visits the synagogue, but his pain persists and he fails to articulate its causes to his superiors. While the slim, sketchy narrative suffers from a lack of details, Assulin shines at depicting the soldier’s feelings of unease and the irreconcilable space between soldier and commander (“the conversation evolved into a conversation between two deaf people”). This work on the fragility of the human spirit is touching, but it’s no Catch-22.

April 1, 2020

DEBUT As Roland Barthes is here quoted as saying, "It is my political right to be a subject which I must protect," a point taken up boldly by Israeli novelist Assulin in this Sapir and Ministry of Culture Prize-winning debut. The story opens with the narrator declaring to his chagrined if supportive parents that he finds the regimentation and reductivism of military life unbearable and will not return to service; they're now driving to the mental health offices at Tel Hashomer Hospital to arrange for his release from his duties. As the narrator unfolds his distress, readers are left wondering whether he is unduly weak-kneed--he admits offhandedly to giving up frequently on school projects he's rushed to embrace--or a sensitive soul unable to fit in. Either way, his story exemplifies the individual's battle against larger forces, and we learn to appreciate his pain. VERDICT An unexpected story of resistance to military life, sobering and nuanced.

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