by David Grossman (Author)
'We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum, and at long last have to tell it - the truth I want to be able to say to myself, I bled truth with her, yes, that's what I want. Be a knife for me, and I, I swear, will be a knife for you.' An awkward, neurotic seller of rare books writes a desperate letter to a beautiful stranger whom he sees at a class reunion. This simple, lonely attempt at seduction begins a love affair of words between Yair and Miriam, two married, middle-aged adults, dissatisfied with their lives, yearning for the connection that has always eluded them - and, eventually, reawakened to feelings that they thought had passed them by. Their correspondence unfolds into an exchange of their most naked confessions: of desire, childhood tragedies, joys, and humiliations. Through the dialogue between Yair - a family man and surprisingly successful adulterer, whose guarded letters reveal a life of duplicity - and Miriam, at first deceptively open and warm, who fills her life with distraction to avoid a past full of painful secrets, Be My Knife explores the nature and the limits of intimacy.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 04 Feb 2002
ISBN 10: 0747549524
ISBN 13: 9780747549529
Book Overview: * 'A writer of passionate self-honesty, unafraid to ask terrible questions.' Nadine Gordimer * David Grossman has been published in twenty-two languages and has won numerous international awards. * THE ZIGZAG KID won both the Premio Grinzane and the Premio Mondelo in Italy.