Closing the Sea

The four stories in this debut collection by a young Israeli writer conjure a surreal Israel suffering from a moral malaise, a land where the chasms between young and old, Jews and Arabs, parents and siblings grow wider every day. In ``Schlaffstunde,'' a nasty little family drama interlaced with Holocaust memories, two young cousins secretly make love; when an uncle discovers them, they plot to kill him. Mother-daughter rivalry fuels ``Disneyel,'' a garishly funny tale, set in a hospital, about two women who are both in love with a tacky entrepreneur who plans to build an amusement park in the Negev. ``Fellini's Shoes,'' a modern fairy tale spiked with macabre phantasmagoria, tells of an ordinary waitress courted by a film director who begs her to play a leading role; soon enough, her life comes to resemble a Fellini movie. ``Closing the Sea'' limns a timid schoolteacher on her day off, adrift in cold, hard Tel Aviv. In each of these stories, Katzir turns the trivia of daily existence into wickedly mordant social commentary. `slice of life' used in review of debut collrection in first drop, I think. (June)