LOVE

A stream-of-consciousness–style narrative told by an Israeli sex worker.

The narrator of Eitan’s feverish debut doesn’t have a name. She calls herself Libby at one point, but that’s clearly a kind of disguise—she’s a sex worker. No need for real names. Although what is real, anyway? The novel, which could (and perhaps should) be devoured in a single sitting, plays with our longing for truth, our idea that a comprehensive story will tell us how we got to where we are. Libby starts in the second person. “You were blond,” she writes. “No; your hair was as black as a raven, and curly. You were born in Saint Petersburg. No no: your parents came from America.” How Libby came to this particular line of work and how—or whether—she leaves is never made clear. Eitan’s style is more impressionistic: She lingers on sensory moments rather than explication or plot. The book was apparently a runaway success in Israel, where the story is set, and it’s easy to see why. The prose has a livid energy, and the storytelling is as brutal as it is relentless. Libby, or whatever her name is, never seems to feel much of anything. When, late in the book, the story hints toward violence, there’s a feeling of relief—not because Libby has freed herself; there doesn’t seem to be any sort of freedom in this context—but because she’s taken definite action. Or she hasn’t. Just as the reader most craves concrete detail, a solid sense of whatever might be happening, Eitan’s focus grows even fuzzier. That might be the book’s only flaw—and it might not even be a flaw.

Intensely vivid, lyrical, and raw, Eitan’s debut is as disturbing as it is moving.