Open Heart
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Open Heart: A Novel |
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| Author: | A.B. Yehoshua |
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| Publisher: | Harvest Books |
From the opening lines of this first-person narrative, the reader is propelled into the mind of Dr. Benjamin Rubin, an ambitious young internist, who is jockeying for position with the hospital’s top surgeons. But it isn’t until Benjy learns that his internship has been terminated, and that he has been selected to accompany the hospital administrator and his wife to India to retrieve their ailing daughter, that Yehoshua sets his hero on a journey of self-discovery. This journey brings the supremely rational, coolheaded physician to surrender all his deeply held beliefs when his experience in India awakens an erotic passion that dares to destroy his tidy world as he pursues the illicit love of the administrator’s wife.
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Unlike Yehoshua’s previous books, the motives of his central character in his fifth novel, Open Heart, appear unrelated to the larger social changes in Israeli society. During an assignment to India, Dr. Benjamin Rubin falls in love with the country’s spiritual mystery and the nurturing sexuality of his patient’s mother. In looking to the East for enlightenment, he neglects his religious heritage, even as others are reclaiming traditional Jewish culture. As he immerses himself in newfound religion, one is forced to wonder if Rubin is genuinely acknowledging the self’s larger place in the cosmos or is simply on an opportunistic venture to mask his own impoverished spirit.
