Let’s dive into troubled waters with Turbulence, by the Israeli Eshkol Nevo, a novel composed of three stories crossed by death, disappearance, inner heartbreaks. Three independent stories, but which sometimes touch each other, which explore with finesse the troubled waters of appearances, the twists and turns of married life and the complexity of family ties.
First stop, in a smoky area between South America and the Israeli desert. In “The Road to Death,” a man recounts a sequence of events that could have consequences. Initially, a young Israeli who died in Bolivia during his honeymoon, having fallen with his bicycle to the bottom of a precipice on the famous Death Road between La Paz and Coroico.
Also traveling, the narrator, Omri, had met the couple just before the tragedy. Especially her, one could say, with her seductive smile, her exuberance, her mane of brown curls and that hungry something in her eyes. “An idyllic hour in La Paz. » Returning to Israel, he learns of the young man’s death and decides to go to his funeral, where things go a little off the rails.
For all kinds of reasons, the young woman’s in-laws suspect her of having been responsible for this accident – which may not be an accident. “It’s like this: when you activate the right levers in an individual, he is capable of losing his mind, falling into the abyss, and becoming an accomplice to a crime. » Appearances might be against him. The story keeps us in suspense, drawn from several threads.
In “Family History”, it is a sixty-eight-year-old chief doctor, whose wife died a short time ago, who tells us his version. He had taken a liking to a young intern “a little prettier than average”. Lots of affinities, a “paternal” feeling and an irrepressible desire to protect her, a slip, a misinterpreted gesture. Result ? A complaint filed against him. And for the two protagonists, a whole past, buried or unknown, which rises to the surface.
The man tells us his own version here, knowing well that not every truth is good to tell and that appearances, once again, seem to prove him wrong.
Subtle, Eshkol Nevo, born in Jerusalem in 1971, author notably of Three floors (Gallimard, 2018), adapted by Nanni Moretti with the film Tre piani in 2021, infuses this story with a clever reflection on fatherhood and filiation.
Equally enigmatic, “A Man Enters an Orchard” (the title which originally covered the book in Hebrew) is inspired by a Talmudic parable linked to the interpretation of sacred texts and its dangers. During a couple’s usual Saturday hike through the orchards, the narrator’s husband, who had gone to take a piss, disappeared without a trace and without explanation.
The forty-two-year-old woman will also have to expose her version of the facts and exhume, in the eyes of the police and her children, between dismay and guilt, secrets that she had believed to have little significance. Dizzy.