To America and Back
Author: Mordechai Landsberg
Category: Other2
Published: 2012
Series:
View: 301
Read OnlineThe novel’s lead character – 17 years old Humik, is living with his immigrant family in LA. He is longing for his childhood’s native home Israel and struggles with his parents, as he wishes to return there. He leaves home and stays in NY for some months, having 2 strange love affairs. His family refuses to finance him, as they know he'sgoing to 'Hell of Israel', but he is adamant...The novel's lead character - teenager Humik- is living with his immigrant family in LA. He is longing for his childhood’s native home and struggles with his parents, as he wishes to ‘return to the Hell of Israel’ (as his mother calls that). He leaves home and stays in NY for some months, while his family refuse to finance him, because they contradict his adventurous aspiration. He really follows the example of his 'hero' -Elkano - his mother’s young lover, who had fallen in battle, and his father married Humik’s mother (being then herself already a widow). Now Humik is in the same age of his hero, that he had known in childhood: He is also handsome like him, Now Humik is in the same age of his hero; he is handsome like him, and as such he is having a love affair with an Israeli girl who has come to NY to study in Manhattan High School of Music. But soon Humik reveals that she has suffered from schizophrenia. Not long after having shocked by that- he is tempted by a good looking and impressive NY young woman of 23, Raphaella. She studies ‘Managing Artists and Movies Producing’, and persuades Humik ‘to make a living' by being her sex-mate in a Peepshow Brothel. Humik is not aware of her complex character (She could not bear her father’s pedantic control over her, and escaped from home in her teenage)...Suddenly, after two months of sexing with Humik, Raphaella’s ex guy-friend, a mini-market owner – boasting for his business success, re-contacts her and promises a marriage. She leaves our protagonist and returns to that guy, who is revealed to be a queer person, on the verge of psychopathy, who soon sinks into enormous debts. Meanwhile our young Protagonist arrives in his native land, to join the parachutes’ troops there. He has reached his goal – but is wounded in the battlefield. While in recovery- he is faced unexpectedly with an ‘American bad guy’, who is suspected by Humik to be the run-away murderer of his attractive girlfriend Raphaella from NY. The knowledge that such a person would live not far from him, and not caught to get into court and be punished- dims the light of Humik's voyage. But he is too stubborn and proud to admit his adolescence illusion: He continues to choose his own way, and refuses to get back to America.