Read in 2026 - 6: The Netanyahus

The Netanyahus

Joshua Cohen

My book-swapping friend lent me this paperback, deliberately not telling me anything about it; she only said, somewhat cryptically, "I am really interested to hear what you make of this one."

And that's just it - I am not at all sure what I make of it. What I can say with certainty is that it is not a book I recommend.

The sub-title says "An account of a minor and ultimately even negligible episode in the history of a very famous family" - does that help?

Maybe it helps when I give you a brief summary of the story: In the winter of 1959/60, a Jewish historian at a college in the U.S. is asked to help assess Professor Benzion Netanyahu, an exiled Israeli scholar applying for tenure at the college. 

We learn a little bit about the historian's relationships with his colleagues and get some background about his family life. Two letters arrive for him from Israel, one endorsing the professor, the other one warning against him. These letters take up an entire chapter each, and are very lengthy and... sprawling, is the term that first comes to my mind.

Then the Professor himself arrives at the house of the historian and his family - but he's not alone: Unexpectedly, his wife and three sons are with him. The sons are 7, 10 and 13 years old and are Iddo, Benjamin and Jonathan. 

According to the information given on the back of the book, it is a "wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending identity, and politics". I'm afraid that almost all of the comedy was lost on me - there was exactly ONE sentence uttered by the historian's visiting mother-in-law that made me laugh out loud. I don't find pushy, demanding people humorous, nor do I chuckle when visitors don't know how to behave and wreak havoc with their hosts' belongings. 

It may be a case of me not fully grasping the intellectual depth of it all; in any case, what kept me reading was the relative shortness of the book and wanting to know where it was all heading.

The author mixes fact and fiction; the characters of Professor Netanyahu, his wife and sons are real, with their real names, and the middle boy, Benjamin, is the man we know today as Israel's Prime Minister. The last few pages of the book (called "Credit & Extra Credit" shed some light on what's fact and what the author imagined, and I looked up the Professor and his family members on wikipedia to find out more.

But I can not say this is a book I'd list for the Pulitzer Prize (it won in "Fiction") or see it as one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2021 - admittedly, taste and opinion varies from one reader to the next, but this reader was left more or less shrugging by the end of the book, and feeling some relief at finishing it.

You can learn more about the author and his work here on Wikipedia, or here on his own website.

A Good Walking Week

...is what I had last week. The weather was rather mixed; we saw everything from a flurry of snow (which didn't last) to sun and rain, a rainbow and sun again, as well as thick grey fog. By the way, in the post about last week of January I forgot to mention that on the Sunday walk with O.K., I spotted the first snowdrops and yellow eranthis in a garden - for me, the very first signs of spring, along with the first blackbird singing.

On Monday (2 February), I was working from home as usual and also as usual spent part of my lunch break having a back & shoulders massage at the nearby day spa. At temperatures around freezing point, mid-morning rain turned into a brief flurry of snow, but later the sun put in an appearance and the afternoon remained dry.

View from my kitchen at about 10 to 8 on Monday morning...

...and the same view at about 10:30 am.

This was welcome, since I was meeting a friend for an after-work walk. She lives in the same town, but we usually manage only two or three meetings a year; our last one was at the Christmas market in December. 1.5 hours of walking was a great opportunity to catch up with each other's news.

Tuesday (3 February) pretended to be a sunny day, luring me out for my customary walk to Benningen. 

Good job I was wearing my padded winter jacket with a hood, because light rain started to fall halfway into the walk. The sun was never entirely gone, though, and I kept checking the sky for a rainbow. I finally saw it, and it was perfect, reaching from one end of the horizon to the other. But it remained very pale and disappeared quickly so that I did not take a picture. 

Still, the light was beautiful all evening, as you can see from my photos (and of course, it was even more beautiful in real life).

My regular day at the office followed on Wednesday (4 February). Afterwards, I went to see my Mum. On my request, she had prepared a fresh salad for the two of us. When I've had lunch at work at the canteen, something light is all I need in the evening, and this was just right.

Thursday (5 February) saw me again working from home. I started very early and didn't have any meetings in the afternoon, which allowed me to wrap up work at 4:00 pm and set off to the train station where I took a local train to Benningen - not because I wanted to repeat Tuesday's walk in reverse, but I intended to go along the river.

Back in October (click here for that post), I had last tried to walk that lane but found it blocked for all traffic including pedestrians because of construction work. The signs that explained the blocking back then said "until December"; now, about two months later, I thought the lane would be open again.

Well, it wasn't. 

Instead, I crossed the footbridge to the other side of the river and walked to Ludwigsburg from there. Only the very first part was in the sun; then the angle of the sun and the path being at the bottom of the river valley meant that I was almost completely in the shade for the rest of the way. Never mind, it still was a good substantial walk, and 2 1/2 hours later I was home.

Above the river Neckar on the footbridge leading to Marbach.

My occasional work place, the Schiller Museum in Marbach.

The "rocket" coming into view.

On top of the hill to the right, you can just about make out the small ruined castle where O.K. and I enjoyed a wine tasting last summer.

Back across the Neckar, still about 45 minutes from home.

I had a quiet day on Friday (6 February), working from home and then going about my weekly cleaning etc. until it was time to pack my suitcase for the weekend and go to the station. My trains were on time - in fact, I arrived in Offenburg about FOUR minutes EARLY, much to the astonishment of O.K. Of course I said I'd told the driver to hurry up a bit because I was hungry (which I was - on those Fridays, we don't get to sit down for our evening meal until about 9:00 pm).

In Ludwigsburg, the day had been beautiful and sunny, but it was raining in Offenburg.

Saturday (7 February) was spring-like with wall-to-wall sunshine and temperatures as mild as 12C/53F, which felt even warmer in the sun when there was no wind. 

It would have been perfect for a good hike, but O.K. wanted to take advantage of the weather by cutting the hedge behind his mother's house. And just as I knew I couldn't persuade him to join me for a walk, he could not persuade me to stay put for longer than I needed to get the ironing done and get us a midday snack from the bakery.

Storks are back on the roof of the vicarage!

Carnival bunting has been strung across all the length of the village road.

Just after 1:00 pm, I left O.K. to his hedge-trimming and went to take in all the beauty of that day - sunshine, birdsong, early spring flowers, and more sunshine!

Looking back towards the village.

The vines have been cut and tidied.

Snowdrops!

The first crocus I have seen this year!

Back towards the village, just round the bend from here.

Late afternoon, we both changed into nicer clothes. O.K. drove us to a nearby village where we had booked a table for the evening to test a restaurant in view of our wedding. The food was very good and the service friendly if a little slow at times. But I have to concede that they were rather busy. I am now in the process of booking our small wedding party with them.

On Sunday (8 February), we woke up to a thick fog and cooler temperatures. We were still determined to go for a walk together, and when O.K. checked the weather map, he saw that there was no fog less than 20 km away from us along the Kinzig valley.

After about half an hour's drive, we parked the car in Hausach and climbed the path to the ruined castle.

According to Wikipedia, a first castle has been there as early as the 12th century.

The tower is only open for visitors in the summer.

View from the castle across the town of Hausach.

From there, we walked into the woods, past a playground (where of course I could not resist a bit of silliness) and a chapel, and back down into the town, where we had a stroll among historical buildings and a look into the neo-Gothic church.

I like playgrounds, especially when there is nobody else about!

The door was locked; I would have liked to have a look inside.

Not a small castle, only an old water reservoir!

St. Mauritius, built in 1896 from the red sandstone typical for the Black Forest region.

While we were still out, O.K.'s sister texted us with an invitation for coffee and cake at her place, and so we spent the rest of the afternoon with them. Her freshly baked apple pie was very nice!

Back at the cottage, we had our usual quiet evening with early bedtime in view of Monday's early start.

Read in 2026 - 5: Murder in York

Murder in York

Book 12 in The Yorkshire Murder Mysteries series

J.R. Ellis

Not long ago, I read #11 in this series I enjoy so much. This time, the setting is somewhat different in that we're in the city of York and not in some remote location in the Dales or a picturesque village. And it's nearly Christmas, with DCI Oldroyd visiting the city both for professional and private reasons.

York claims to be the most haunted city in the U.K., and ghost tours are very popular there. Oldroyd goes on such a tour and is enjoying the drama and bits of history when he happens to find a real dead body - not some prop from the tour.

Although York is not "his" beat, he soon joins the investigating team there, and his trusted assistant Andy is assigned to help, too.

It soon becomes apparent that the victim, a greedy property developer who treated his tenants badly, had many enemies as well as an ex-wife, who would all profit from his death. Then, just as the list of suspects is getting longer, a homeless person is murdered very close to where the first body was found. And soon afterwards, a second homeless man dies...

Is there a serial killer with a grudge against the homeless on the loose, who mistook the first victim? Are the three murders related at all?

As usual, the case gets more puzzling as more suspects and possible connections emerge, but as usual, Oldroyd trusts both the evidence and his instinct. He and Andy carry out their part of the investigation with sometimes unorthodox methods, and at one point Andy saves his boss' life.

At the same time back in Harrogate, the third regular member of their team, Stephanie, tries to divide Christmas preparations equally between herself and Andy while struggling with a cold... or is it a flu... or something else entirely?

Like I have said before when reviewing this series, much of its charm for me lies in the setting; places in Yorkshire I know quite well or at least know of. Also, I really like the characters; they are like real people with strengths and flaws, and what they deal with in their personal and professinal lives is plausible.

The plight of the homeless is a central element of the story, and reading about winter and Christmas time just after Christmas and while it is winter here makes it all the more poignant.

Hopefully, J.R. Ellis will write many more books featuring Oldroyd and his team!