Love Life

This sexy, densely written Israeli bestseller takes up where Erica Jong left off, documenting the escapades of an otherwise intelligent heroine who lets her comfortable marriage fall apart as she pursues erotic adventure and personal fulfillment. Bored by her husband, despite or perhaps because of the way he calls her Moley (she calls him Ratty) and uninspired by her graduate studies in biblical legends, Ya'arah yearns for passionate excitement. She meets the unlikely object of her obsession at her parents' home when her father's friend Aryeh Reven returns to Israel to care for his dying wife. Ya'arah falls head over heels for the aging Lothario, first seeking him out in the dressing room of a clothing store, then in other equally inconvenient but titillating locales. Ya'arah is enthralled by Aryeh's links to her parents' younger days, the years before the devastation of their son's death blighted their lives. Jeopardizing her career by missing meetings and ignoring assignments, leaving her husband to take their romantic vacation alone, then spying on him from an airport corner as he deplanes, Ya'arah seems bent on her own destruction. With appallingly bad timing, she shows up at Aryeh's apartment while he sits shivah with his in-laws. Shalev echoes and outdoes Jong with outrageously sensuous, often humiliating situations described by a narrator who acts as if she has lost her sanity while commenting wryly, even perceptively, on her own misdeeds. Whether Ya'arah is lying to the head of her department or interpreting ancient stories, she explodes with ingenuity and eventually insight as she comes to understand her mother's choices and, to some extent, Israeli society, with its visceral ties to the past. (Mar.)