"A Pigeon and a Boy" by Meir Shalev

A Pigeon and a Boy is a literary fiction novel by a renown Israeli writer Meir Shalev. The novel follows two separate timelines alternating between the present day Israel and Israel on the brink of and at the beginning of its War of Independence in the 1940s. Ultimately, it is the story of two boys and two love stories. Slowly, deliberately, Shalev allows us to see how the stories are connected. What I liked about his writing is that he does not spell things out to the reader. He has confidence his readers can infer and figure things out on their own. The book also includes some of the most lyrical passages I've ever read in literature. Here is one of my absolute favorites:

"Migrating birds have winter homes and summer homes"... "But which of the two is the real one, the one they come home to?"
"The whole world's their home," Tirzah said. "When they fly down to Africa all they're really doing is moving from room to room" (p. 151).

This quote moved me to tears. As someone who has moved quite a bit and always struggled with the idea of "home," this passage is quite liberating on so many levels. We all just move from room to room. That is so beautiful!

The one thing that did not quite work for me in this book were the sections focused on the physical relationships between characters. Instead of being beautiful, innocent and touching, I thought they were extremely awkward and I tended to skip over them. Fortunately, there weren't that many.

Overall, if you like well-written novels with well developed characters and a slowly emerging plot line, I would definitely recommend this book. 4 out of 5 stars.