Waking Lions
Waking Lions book cover

Waking Lions

Paperback – February 27, 2018

by
Price
$15.99
Format
Paperback
Pages
352
Publisher
Back Bay Books
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0316395410
Dimensions
5.5 x 0.88 x 8.25 inches
Weight
10.4 ounces

Description

" Waking Lions offers a commentary on privilege and otherness, challenging readers to confront their own blind spots and preconceptions....Trained as a clinical psychologist, Gundar-Goshen examines her characters with the same formidable gaze. Nobody emerges unscathed....Gundar-Goshen is adept at instilling emotional depth into a thriller plot, delivering the required twists and turns along with an incisive portrayal of her characters' guilt, shame and desire, fluidly shifting between their perspectives....Readers will be rewarded by [ Waking Lions '] exhilarating, cinematic finale. Skillfully translated by Sondra Silverston, Waking Lions is a sophisticated and darkly ambitious novel, revealing an aspect of Israeli life rarely seen in its literature."― Ayelet Tsabari , New York Times Book Review "Vividly imagined, clever, and morally ambiguous....[ Waking Lions ] is a smart and disturbing exploration of the high price of walking away, whether it be from a car accident or from one's own politically unstable homeland." ― Maureen Corrigan , National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" " Waking Lions , in a propulsive translation from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, yokes a crime story to thorny ethical issues in ways reminiscent of Donna Tartt and Richard Price...it's a rare book that can trouble your conscience while holding you in a fine state of suspense."― Sam Sacks , Wall Street Journal "If there were a literary prize for nail-biting first lines, Israeli writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's second novel, Waking Lions would win...brave and startling." ― Financial Times UK "Uncommonly complex, socially aware, and ethically ambiguous....plot is almost secondary to the political implications Gundar-Goshen explores - but what a plot it is, fuel for meditations on integrity and the layered guilt of the Israeli bourgeoisie."― Boris Kachka , New York "7 Books You Need to Read This February" "Earth-shattering."― Harper's Bazaar "An intense moral thriller.... The twists upon twists upon twists in this story...will have readers yelping out loud. Waking Lions seems poised to catch fire." ― Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Anyone who loves the magic of the printed word should read Waking Lions ....Gundar-Goshen has earned, and deserves, a worldwide audience, and this magnificent novel may well be the vehicle for that."― Joe Hartlaub , Bookreporter "It pulled me right in. In just 18 words, a spell was cast and broken, and I couldn't wait to go on."― Moira MacDonald , Seattle Times "Gripping....twists and turns like a thriller."― Sunday Times UK "It is a literary achievement for its page-turning exploration of inconvenient empathy and culpability. Gundar-Goshen's descriptions of pain and medicine are tender and startling, but perhaps the novel's greatest strength is the way it considers how we look at each other, the power of our gaze on strangers and on those we love. It's about seeing and being seen, about pride and power. This is a brave novel, socially aware and truly unforgettable." ― Cat Acree , BookPage " Waking Lions is immensely suspenseful. Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's alarmingly realistic and superbly written novel will leave readers wondering what they might be capable of under duress, and what makes a good person do such an awful thing--and if a marriage can survive such deception. The difficult decisions faced by Eitan, Liat and the Eritrean community are haunting." ― Jessica Howard , Shelf Awareness (starred review) "Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's novel, Waking Lions, is more than your guilty-pleasure thriller - although its twists and turns will keep you in suspense until the last page." ― E. Ce Miller , Bustle "It's not every day a writer like this comes our way."― Guardian UK "A moment's inattention upends multiple lives in Gundar-Goshen's powerful thriller....The psychological complications match the plot ones and will please Ruth Rendell fans."― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "....a work of great subtlety which wrenches at the heart of both the family and the state, and makes for compulsive reading.... [A] sophisticated, angst-filled thriller." ― Brian Martin , Spectator UK "Mesmerizing....Smoothly alternating points of view, it uses the format of a thriller to study the almost unbridgeable gap between insider and outsider. The complex relationships between Israelis, Bedouin Arabs, and Eritreans may be unique to Israel, but that social dynamic will reverberate meaningfully with U.S. readers as well."― Booklist (starred review) "Extraordinarily assured. Its themes are daring.... Waking Lions is a startlingly achieved novel, with all the page-turning appeal of a fine-honed thriller. Gundar-Goshen gives voice to the refugee population that haunts the margins of Israeli society, probing the very hardest of the hard questions, both universal and specific to Israel, with the finesse of the brain surgeon and the wisdom of the philosopher, both of whom know only too well that there are no easy answers." ― Natasha Lehrer , Jewish Quarterly " Waking Lions is a classy, suspenseful tale of survival where the good guys and the bad guys are harder to distinguish than you might think." ― The Times UK " Waking Lions has the type of seductive plot twists-a hit-and-run, a blackmailing scheme, a crime that threatens to rend a marriage-that, seemingly, only a fiction writer could concoct. But in fact, the 34-year-old writer, who lives in Israel, borrowed much of the premise of the story from real life." ― Daniel Lefferts , Publishers Weekly "Writers to Watch Spring 2017" "A literary thriller that is used as a vehicle to explore big moral issues. I loved everything about it."― Daily Mail UK "It is a literary achievement for its page-turning exploration of inconvenient empathy and culpability. Gundar-Goshen's descriptions of pain and medicine are tender and startling, but perhaps the novel's greatest strength is the way it considers how we look at each other, the power of our gaze on strangers and on those we love. It's about seeing and being seen, about pride and power. This is a brave novel, socially aware and truly unforgettable." ― Cat Acree , BookPage "Gundar-Goshen transcends the genre of thriller... Waking Lions is a work of exquisite literary craft, a book that penetrates to the heart and soul of its characters."― Jonathan Kirsch , Jewish Journal "Why should Jewish immigrants enjoy immediate citizenship in Israel, while African immigrants are detained or deported? Of course, these problems are not unique to Israel. Exactly the same arguments over immigration, on a much larger scale, are dominating the politics of Europe and the United States. It is surely for this reason that Waking Lions , the new psychological thriller by Israeli novelist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, has broken out to become a worldwide phenomenon."― Adam Kirsch , Tablet Magazine "An auspicious entry on the English-language scene for Israeli author Gundar-Goshen."― David Keymer , Library Journal "[A] suspenseful morality tale."― Sarah Murdoch , Toronto Star "In Waking Lions , the bad guys are the good guys, the victims are the perpetrators, and the ending is definitely not what you'll expect." ― E. Ce Miller , Bustle "15 Books With Plot Twists You Never Saw Coming" Ayelet Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel in 1982 and holds an MA in clinical psychology from Tel Aviv University. She has worked for the Israeli civil rights movement, and is an award-winning screenwriter. She won Israel's prestigious Sapir Prize for best debut. Waking Lions , her first novel published in the U.S., has been translated into nine languages.

Features & Highlights

  • After one night's deadly mistake, a man will go to any lengths to save his family and his reputation. Neurosurgeon Eitan Green has the perfect life -- married to a beautiful police officer and father of two young boys. Then, speeding along a deserted moonlit road after an exhausting hospital shift, he hits someone. Seeing that the man, an African migrant, is beyond help, he flees the scene. When the victim's widow knocks at Eitan's door the next day, holding his wallet and divulging that she knows what happened, Eitan discovers that her price for silence is not money. It is something else entirely, something that will shatter Eitan's safe existence and take him into a world of secrets and lies he could never have anticipated. Waking Lions is a gripping, suspenseful, and morally devastating drama of guilt and survival, shame and desire from a remarkable young author on the rise.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(975)
★★★★
25%
(812)
★★★
15%
(487)
★★
7%
(227)
★
23%
(748)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Not worth your time, even as a “beach book.”

Pilfering medications and medical supplies on a frequent basis in a 2014 medical facility sets up all sorts of red flags with associates at work after the second or third instance. Investigator wife is not very strong in her skills finding the perpetrator of the Eritrean’s demise nor where her husband is every night. The story has bursts of energy and then drags off in random descriptive trails that serve little purpose. I have concluded this book and have no idea if Eitan went back to his wife, if she dumped him, if the police ever concluded who killed the Eritrean......not worth your time, even for a beach book.
9 people found this helpful
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boring

started OK but soon became a boring story. i can tell this is something close to the author's heart but it went on and on. i had a tough time finishing it.
2 people found this helpful
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Both a thriller and an inner exploration of the soul

This book shifts deftly between levels of narrative. Some parts are as tight as a thriller (which to some extent, this book is--hence I will say nothing about the plot). Other parts are poetic to the point where you feel you are floating in an ocean of sensation. Through it all, Gundar-Goshen explores the complexity of relationships among people thrown unwillingly together, and the tensions of race and class among many sectors of Israel. The Beduins don't come out very well in the story, but the Eritreans take on a rich inner life as the book goes on. By the end, I felt, the thriller and and inner exploration of souls merge satisfyingly.
2 people found this helpful
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Excellent Tale

A fascinating story set in an unusual environment. Great characters and suspenseful storytelling.
1 people found this helpful
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A few good elements, but neither pleasant nor suspenseful

The combination of an excellent publisher and enthusiastic blurbs (especially regarding suspensefulness) led me to expect too much from this book. Far from being a thriller, it's mainly about the challenges of a marriage with children, where both parents are working at demanding jobs. The main characters are better than 2-dimensional, but not particularly likable. The situations present some ethical dilemmas, but the fatal hit-and-run that gets the plot rolling is a premise that will make some of those dilemmas more the stuff of melodrama than of daily life.

Social problems in Israel and the hardships of migrants are an added ingredient. That may interest readers who, like me, feel that fiction can be a more empathetic medium for conveying such matters than the news. But while I don't have direct knowledge about the local realities, the fact that the migrant theme of the book overlapped with a subplot involving drug dealing made me suspect that the portrayal might have been more sensationalized than insightful.

Like many readers I was quickly drawn in, but wound up reading at least two-thirds of the book less as a matter of pleasure than of principle and determination. (I'd recently jettisoned a couple of other books early on, and didn't want to continue that streak.) One feature that made my task more difficult was the author's apparent delight in confronting the reader with almost every possible bodily excretion, as if saying "This is reality -- DEAL with it!" There is even a named character who is introduced early on for no apparent purpose other than to describe his bowel movements: he never re-appears in the later narrative. This suggests that the book might have been helped by a better editor. Some of the author's impressions of male psychology were also less than pitch-perfect, such as when a healthy 41-year-old man has an erection that "warms his heart." All told, not a book whose traces I hope will linger in my memory.
1 people found this helpful
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Loved the author's insight into people's minds

Loved the author's insight into people's minds, especially their assumptions/beliefs/blind spots regarding "the other". Terribly sad story told beautifully. Didn't want it to end.
1 people found this helpful
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Five Stars

Great story, couldn’t put it down. Recommended the book to many who also enjoyed it.
1 people found this helpful
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Five Stars

Still reading this well-written book,,, Having heard the author lecture it's exciting to read the book itself.
1 people found this helpful
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A story of desperation

Eitan, the protagonist of "Waking Lions", is a neurologist in Beersheba, Israel. Late One night he accidentally hits and kills a man, an Eritrean, and his actions have serious effects on his life. To say more would give away too much of the plot.

While the story is an interesting one, I found that the novel dragged with too much back-story details. The message of the novel does give the reader much to think about, and I believe this novel would be great for book clubs.
1 people found this helpful
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Waking Lions

Midway into this novel, a character observes that an awakened lion who tastes human flesh always will crave it. The symbol appears only once, but it aptly describes the cascading greed, fear and killing that characterize the story. The author, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (b. 1982) is an Israeli clinical psychologist and civil rights activist whose works have been highly praised. "Waking Lions" was my first experience with her writing.

This novel is set in various hospitals and cities in Israel and in the desert. The primary character, Dr. Eitan Green, 41, is an Israeli neurosurgeon, married to a lovely woman, Liat, a police detective. The couple have two small children. One dark night, after long stressful hours at the hospital, Eitan goes for a joy ride in his SUV. He hits a young black man and quickly realizes that the man's wounds are terminal. Eitan flees from the scene, thus committing a hit-and-run. The next day a lovely young black woman, Sirkit, comes to the home with Eitan's wallet. Thus begins a lengthy story of blackmail, lies, deception, drugs, and violence. as Eitan's life, marriage, and career are jeopardized by his act. Liat becomes involved in investigating the death. The story cascades as bad deeds and crime pile onto each other.

I disliked this book. While a novel of middle length, the writing made the work almost interminable. Pacing is the major problem. Even with a great deal of drugs, sex, and violence the book moves at a glacial pace. It has endless passages of introspection from the three main characters, the doctor, his wife, and the young woman, as the omniscient narrator seems privy to every detail of their hearts and minds. These passages told me little I needed or wanted to know and largely clogged up the novel. The story also meanders to little purpose in its many backstories of the lives of its principal figures together with many other minor characters. The wordy writing style alone made it difficult to stay with the book.

The writing and the lack of focus made me disengage from the stories and the characters. There is a sense of guilt and crime in the story in following the effect of Eitan's actions and his unravelling. I found much of the story implausible as it proceeded and there were many places where the characters could have recovered from an initial wrongful action to take a different course. In other words, I didn't find the long parade of horribles in the novel convincing.

The author is also after larger fare as she examines and is highly critical of Israeli immigration policy towards the many different kinds of illegals flooding its borders. I have no independent knowledge of this issue and wasn't sure what to make of the author's treatment or her views. The story left me unconvinced and unwilling to draw conclusions. As a matter of novel writing, the story left me cold and didn't fit well, in my view, with the story of Eitan.

There are a number of sharply drawn scenes in the book, but I was impatient with "Waking Lions" from the outset. My feeling intensified and I found the book a slog. I reluctantly read the book through. The overall effect was one of tedium and of wanting the novel to at last come to an end. The book has received critical acclaim, but I didn't like it.

Robin Friedman

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