Sand

The riveting English-language debut from celebrated Israeli author Einat Yakir, Sand tells the story of a family fleeing from a comfortless past into a promising present, but failing to strike roots in a ground that’s mostly made of sand. In clear and uncompromising prose, Sand dives in and out of the alternating viewpoints of a family who just arrived in Tel Aviv: a mother who rebuilds a business of coffee ground fortune telling, a son who backslides into petty crime, a daughter who pivots between the carelessness of childhood and the allures of being seen as a woman, and a man who takes on the role of a father for strangers in the street but never for his own children. Sharing only the space of that new, sand-dusted apartment on a bustling street, the family members lead lives that, while parallel, never fully intersect. Their communication is one of closed doors, of hung-up phone calls, and of a mother’s crumbling hope to escape the undercurrent of violence that made life in Ashdod impossible. Brusque and honest, Sand eddies around the greatest mystery of human interaction: the unknowability of another person’s mind. Its narration hovers on the edge of action, stares at the sleight of hand while the magic happens somewhere else. Pulling the reader into a maelstrom of a family’s inexplicable bad luck, it reflects life more honestly than most books: not knowing the reason for other people’s actions, they often seem cruel.