Unintended consequences
Israeli author releases "The Wolf Hunt," a razor-sharp, exhausting drama

Unintended consequences
Jeffrey Mannix - 08/03/2023

New, young fiction writers are appearing in numbers the past few years at the preeminent New York and London publishers. They are served up by boutique publishers that typically publish 10 or 20 titles a year by mostly unknown but clearly talented writers with genuine product.  

In 2018, Little, Brown and Co. published “Waking Lions,” the second novel by Israeli psychologist, playwright and social activist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. “Waking Lions” is a spectacular novel about Dr. Eitan Green, who, driving home from a stressful day of hospital work on a meandering road, runs over an immigrant man walking on the side of the road. He stops, gets out of his SUV, walks toward the body on the gravel in the silver light of the moon, observes a dead or nearly dead man and gets back in his car and drives home. He was seen by the man’s wife, and a bargain is soon struck by this crafty refugee woman. 

“Waking Lions’’ is not about lions, but about compromise of the kind no-one can even predict.

Gundar-Goshen’s second book, “The Liar,” is another knife to the heart. This one is about a chunky, unlovely high school girl working in an ice cream store in summer, unhappily despairing of her lowly position in the hierarchy of school favorites. Her job serving cold, sticky ice cream to unruly children is demeaning, and she is fundamentally distraught over not yet having sex. 

This is a narrative stitched together with fine silk thread. Consequence is Gundar-Goshen’s narrative twine from which she threatens her characters with guilt, fear and ignominy. 

You don’t read these first two books at your own peril. And on Aug. 15, Little, Brown and Co. drops Gundar-Goshen’s third novel, “The Wolf Hunt.’’ You’d be making a mistake not going to Maria’s Bookshop, asking for your 15% Murder Ink discount and ordering “The Wolf Hunt” and the other two books while you’re at it. 

“The Wolf Hunt” is not about wolves, just as “Waking Lions” hasn’t anything to do with lions. And this new tale is assembled just as the other Gundar-Goshen novels, with characters facing the black space of consequences, each choice freighted with backwash that lurks for the unexpected, unlucky or unethical. Crime doesn’t always have to be criminal to punish the offender; it can be unintended and lethal as in an accident or be life-changing from lies everyone tells each day. 

In “The Wolf Hunt,” Lilach and Mikhael Schuster relocate from Israel to Silicon Valley for an executive position Mikhael, now Michael, has been given with a prosperous tech company.

Lilach becomes by default Leela, and they have a 16-year-old son, Adam, who Leela wants to see absorb the California panache he has been shy of.

Gundar-Goshen’s writing is easy, and looks and reads like a spoken tale. But again, she trades in the peril of unexpected consequences that etch the future with foreboding, then, with the clang of a leg snare, there’s no escaping. 

Jamal Jones in Adam’s class bullies Adam for being a Jew while Jamal’s pals laugh. Jamal is a big kid the teachers love and nobody would believe is intolerant of another minority. And one day, Jamal dies in gym class, ostensibly from an overdose of drugs. “The Jew Did It” is scrawled in red paint on the school walls. 

The police investigate; Adam withdraws; Leela worries; Michael sends Adam to karate class with Uri Ziv, a fellow veteran of the Israeli army. But the bullying continues as Uri insinuates himself into the family to protect Leela and Adam. And now another string of unintended consequences bubbles up as Leela encourages Michael to convince his company to hire Uri. The plot ratchets up with Adam worshiping the skilled Uri and Uri getting a security-clearance job with Michael’s company.

“The Wolf Hunt” is more subtle with a little less teeth-gnashing than Gundar-Goshen’s two other books, and at first I wasn’t as impressed. But it’s razor-sharp writing and exhausting drama that ends with great surprise. Buy “Waking Lions’’ if you haven’t already, then “The Liar” and then “The Wolf Hunt.” Do not miss Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, and don’t forget to ask Maria’s Bookshop for your 15% Murder Ink discount.

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