Where I Am

An Israeli PhD student struggles to manage her anxiety in Shem-Ur’s undercooked debut. The novel opens with Reut fretting about the dinner party she’s hosting with her husband, Jean-Claude, in their Paris apartment, for the egoistic writer Mikhail Grigoryev. Reut avoids interacting with their guests, whom she considers elitists, and drinks more than she can handle after Mikhail dismissively calls her thesis subject “esoteric” (it has to do with the American Civil War and Southerners’ adoption of the “medieval knight myth”). When Jean-Claude and Reut are invited to accompany Mikhail to his home in Southern Italy, she’s less than thrilled at the prospect; in addition to her studies, she’s busy translating a British thriller novel into Hebrew. Still, she accepts, and while there, Jean-Claude gets angered by her “moods” and “miserable face,” exacerbating her feelings of inadequacy. As the couple struggles to get along, Reut abandons her translation work and opts to tour Ostuni, a nearby city, with Jean-Claude’s friend Bernard. Reut finds an unexpected connection with Bernard, but the trip is marred by her continued stress and anxiety, which trigger her chronic and undiagnosed gastrointestinal pain. Shem-Ur adds tension with her wrenching descriptions of Reut’s emotional and physical struggles, but there’s not much of a plot or exploration of the character. Readers will be disappointed. (June)