Riverhead Books; First Printing edition (June 16, 2015)
192 pages
Come and let Etgar Keret show you glimpses of his life. In the beginning, his son is born, and in the end, his father passes away. Between the two are some great stories. Keret is a little bit of a mess. He also might be a little bit of a genius. Funny, touching, and always quick, this book was fantastic.
One of my favorite quotes:
After more than forty years of being oppressed by substandard nutrition and deprived of physical activity, my body has taken to the streets. One after another, in remarkable synchronization, my muscles have begun to cramp. It started with my neck, moved down to my shoulders, and at some point even reached my feet. My wife came home one day to find me lying on my back like a dead cockroach. It took her twenty minutes to understand that something was wrong with me, and when she did, the first thing she said was, “You had it coming.”
My wife says that I’m too nice, while I claim that she’s just a very, very bad person. Around the time we started living together, we had a serious fight about it. It started when I came upstairs with a cabdriver who’d taken me home from the university. He had to pee. She awoke to the sound of his flushing the toilet, and she walked into our living room not fully dressed. The skinny cabdriver came out of the bathroom and gave her a polite “Good morning” while zipping up. She responded with a quick “Oh my God” and ran back into the bedroom.