Fate, the latest novel from author Zeruya Shalev, is a powerful family saga investigating how past trauma and violence inevitably resurface to cause further damage. Through vividly depicted characters, Shalev explores Israel’s tumultuous history and the complicated inheritance for the generations following the early Zionists.
At its core, Fate is about two women from different eras whose lives and families intersect. Rachel, a widow, has told her two adult sons little of her early life; she has actively avoided revealing details about her time ruthlessly fighting in the underground Jewish militia. Atara is a middle-aged mother struggling in an unhappy second marriage and coming to terms with the loss of her father, Menachem or “Mano,” with whom she’d had a difficult relationship. When Atara’s father was dying, he revealed that he had briefly been married to Rachel. Atara, burdened with questions about her father, sets out to learn more about what happened to his relationship with Rachel.
The novel follows the shifting dynamics between the two women, painting vivid and nuanced portraits of the characters. Rachel initially rebuffs Atara, and then changes her mind, sharing secrets from her time with Mano. As the novel continues, Atara’s search for understanding exposes reasons for her father’s temper and coldness towards her throughout her childhood. But Atara’s journey to uncover her father’s hidden past also leads to further disruptions in Atara’s family life.
Originally published in Hebrew in 2021, Fate was recently translated into English by Joanna Chen, who brilliantly captures Shalev’s seemingly breathless prose. Using alternating close third-person narratives, Shalev portrays Rachel and Atara as sympathetic and, at the same time, duplicitous. By switching perspectives between the characters, Shalev slowly discloses each woman’s complicated backstory. The dueling narratives help increase the tension between the two women’s differing perspectives, along with the anticipation of how their separate worlds will inevitably crash against each other.
Shalev particularly excels in exposing the nuances of unhappy family relationships. Through painfully stilted dialogue, Shalev dives into the deteriorating marriage between Atara and Alex, her second husband; both Atara and Alex left spouses to form a new family together, and both appear to be suffering. Shalev depicts their mutual misunderstandings and grievances, as well as their own buried guilt for the lives they destroyed. Shalev also describes Rachel’s strained interactions with her sons. Neither woman fully acknowledges how their faults have affected the people they love. By contrasting Atara’s destructive search for truth with Rachel’s violent past, Shalev shows the different ways people avoid taking responsibility for the pain they’ve caused to their loved ones.
Shalev ultimately uses her main characters to highlight larger issues in modern Israeli culture: Rachel struggles to reconcile her youthful idealism and desire to build a new country with the resignation of living in a flawed society, while Atara ponders how to sustain a once-passionate aging marriage. Both women resist true intimacy and vulnerability, seemingly unable to move beyond their painful pasts. In the end, Fate raises questions about how much control people have in their own lives and relationships, particularly when they are burdened with unhealed trauma.
Anna Stolley Persky, a journalist and lawyer by background, writes fiction and creative nonfiction. She’s been published in The Washington Post, Mystery Tribune, Ellery Queen, and Pithead Chapel.
