Transitions

Dayan, the daughter of Israeli general Moshe Dayan, is an author, politician, and social activist who lived most of her life in the public eye. This introspective and moving memoir, written more than three decades after her 1985 biography, My Father, His Daughter, has a very different perspective from the earlier book. At 74, she wrestles with changes in her life. The former parliamentarian and leader on the Tel Aviv city council writes as a widow coming to terms with fragile, deteriorating health and its imposed loneliness. She laments the loss of her life as a young, attractive woman, but readers should not expect a tell-all. She revisits past love affairs in memories but keeps them sealed in a “locked room.” The core chapters describe her late husband’s lengthy illness with Parkinson’s disease and its effect on her and her family until his death in 2003. She finds solace in the intrinsic beauty of her immediate environment and time spent with her grandchildren. Many readers will relate to her struggles with mortality and loss. There is much here that is distinctly Dayan, including her renewed determination to fight for her life, social ideals, and politics after her brother’s death in 2014. (Nov.)