Hebrew Fiction / 'When was your life split in two?'

Ve'im hayu omrim lach (And If You Had Known), by Galit Distel Etebaryan Kinneret Zmora-Bitan (Hebrew), 543 pages, NIS 92

According to the popular saying, all possible story plots have already been written. All that remains is to invent the how, rather than the what - a point of view that's original and refreshing, a fascinating new angle on the familiar story. Galit Distel Etebaryan undertook an extremely difficult literary task: to document how a family, and in particular the mother, copes with raising a child with special needs. It's an onerous mission, because documentation of this kind is liable to find itself lashed to factual reality, to telling the tale as it happened and to other literary ills that intrude when a daily encounter with a grinding situation is an integral part of the fabric of existence. Instead of making a positive contribution, this state of affairs is liable to become an obsession to document the events in a manner faithful to their unfolding, and in so doing, to take over what would otherwise be a worthy piece of prose.

Seemingly, this is another story about an Amazon mother, a woman of nonpareil who sacrifices herself and her relationship with her husband and her young daughter, risking all in order to advance the cause of her undiagnosed son, who is suffering from a range of developmental problems.

Inbal seems to snap out of her previous stupor and now, possessed of the knowledge that "I have a child with a problem - something is not right with my child," she returns to Israel, where she begins to devote her life indefatigably to the boy's well-being. She seeks (in vain) an unequivocal diagnosis for Shaul, encounters therapists of all stripes, and enlists the people who are close to her - a pageant of colorful characters - on behalf of the boy, as she openly demands the mobilization of everyone involved.

Along the way, Inbal, the book's first-person narrator, experiences extreme emotional ups and downs. At one point, she declares her desire to transform Shaul from autistic into genius, and at another expresses her fear that his condition will deteriorate to a point where progress will be impossible. She conducts a persistent, insistent dialogue with what she calls "fate" or "the God of hell," "Lucifer" or, in some cases, "the God of disasters." At times she is convinced that the God of disasters does not strike twice, at other times she is prey to the nightmarish knowledge that anything can happen, because there are people to whom Lucifer grants two special children. She bargains relentlessly with the source of her disasters, bribing and seducing, but she is always unsettled by the thought that maybe it is she herself who is to blame for everything: Perhaps things she did as a child, which in her memory are tinged with evil, were the cause of her twisted fate.

The author's language is rich and confident. The words seem to pour forth, dense and urgent, yet dipped in humor and self-irony. Describing Inbal's disintegrating relations with her husband, Dror, she employs a finely convoluted style, simultaneously funny and emotionally wrenching. Mercilessly, Inbal rails at Dror, at herself and even at the fancy panties she wants to buy in order to recapture his heart: "Just before I make the payment, I rush ... to switch them for a black pair. Black is a sure thing. No one, not even Dror, can fail to get turned on by black lace panties of anorexic size that cost half a mortgage."

Still, tighter editing would have distilled the reading experience even more. For example, a chapter on Ritalin is heavy in detail and leaves the reader with a more-of-the-same feeling. Indeed, it's a good example of how the urge to tell all, to relate the innermost recesses of this "case history," can become an obstacle in the way of the author's brilliant prose.

Galit Distel Etebaryan has written an important book. It is important for anyone who is coping first-hand with special needs of any kind, for those who diagnose and treat special-needs populations, and also for those who are leery of them and avoid them as much as they can. The documentation is alive and riveting, and despite the difficulty and possible aversion that this uneasy, unsexy subject can generate, the author succeeds in dispelling our anxieties and sweeps us into an engrossing, at times breathtaking, journey, one that hurtles to an ending that can be called a triumph.

Ilana Weiser-Senesh is a writer and playwright.