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From "The New Yorker" - In Grossman's latest novel, which tumbles along the dusty streets of Jerusalem, adolescent idealism and angst keep the characters on the move. Assaf, a shy misfit, embarks upon a quixotic journey with a lost dog to find its mistress. Tamar, a caustic fifteen-year-old who can sing Mozart and Leonard Cohen on demand, runs away from home to find the criminals who have ensnared her older brother. A young street musician, in the grip of a heroin habit as formidable as his talent, stumbles through his routines with death close behind. The resulting picaresque is a cross between "Run Lola Run" and "Oliver Twist," and as the reader waits for these solitary odysseys to intersect, the urgency becomes almost unbearable. Grossman evokes teen-age nobility and self-hatred in all its pimply particularity, while slyly suggesting that the arduous quest for connections should never be outgrown.

 

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