Loneliness choked me. Who could I ask and who would tell me who the man in the picture was? I couldn’t ask Mom or Dad because then we’d have to tell them that we had opened the drawer that was locked with a key.
“Mom had another husband,” I said into the collar of my pajamas.
“No she didn’t,” Yosefi said. “You’re making things up again. You also said that they took me from the immigrants’ camp because they didn’t have a boy to work on the farm.”
“Don’t start,” I breathed into his ear. “Come with me tomorrow and you’ll see. There’s a picture of a man hugging her and it’s not Dad.”
Time for Love by Miri Varon is a novel of family stories, filled with humor and sadness, sarcasm and sincerity, evil and compassion.
Family life is complicated: smothering love, guilt, betrayal, abandonment—but also brave friendship and pure love.
This novel was performed as a play at the prestigious Habima Theater in Tel Aviv and throughout Israel.
[Time for Love is] particularly sweeping, from the vantage point of the curious girl, yearning but afraid to know…
Gabriela Avigur-Rotem
Time for Love is a warm and lively novel, well-written, funny and poignant, sophisticated and deep.
Amos Oz
Miri Varon, born in Kfar Bilu, is a lecturer in literature and theater. Her other books include the short-story collections Flying Bride and Blackout, as well as Twilight, a study of the creative process late in life.
