Born in Roma­nia, her for­ma­tive years spent in Israel, Leah Zuck­er­man is a hard­scrab­ble emi­grant in the Unit­ed States — and a fre­quent­ly exas­per­at­ing, some­times unre­li­able, occa­sion­al­ly sym­pa­thet­ic, but always high­ly enter­tain­ing guide to her roller-coast­er of a life. Through her annu­al Rosh Hashanah greet­ings to a cir­cle of old acquain­tances from her Teacher Col­lege days and her decid­ed­ly more reveal­ing let­ters to Mira, a con­fi­dant with whom she shares a trou­bled his­to­ry, Leah draws us into a life which, if not always well lived, is cer­tain­ly lived to its fullest. Over a span of fifty years, Leah’s char­ac­ter flaws and fate­ful choic­es some­times make us cringe in dis­may, yet some­how we are always moved to root for her. Sly­ly titled, bril­liant­ly con­struct­ed, and rich­ly mul­ti­lay­ered, Hap­py New Years deliv­ers as sophis­ti­cat­ed a por­trait of a woman’s strug­gle to achieve ful­fill­ment as one could hope for from the author of the splen­did novel­la col­lec­tion The Hebrew Teacher. 

When read­ing Leah’s ear­ly let­ters from Amer­i­ca, it is some­times tempt­ing to be dis­mis­sive of her cliched lan­guage as she plots her ambi­tious pur­suit of her ​“Amer­i­can Dream.” But as that dream begins to with­er under the onslaught of sti­fling real­i­ties, a more com­plex appre­ci­a­tion of her moti­va­tions and some­times des­per­ate choic­es emerges. Aban­don­ing her ear­ly career as a Hebrew teacher and aspi­ra­tion to serve as a bridge between Israel and the local Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, Leah bounces from career to career — at one low ebb, shilling for Tup­per­ware, and at her pinnacle,selling mil­lion-dol­lar homes as a real­tor. As one roman­tic or finan­cial scheme falls apart after anoth­er, we can’t help but mar­vel at both the protagonist’s dizzy­ing capac­i­ty for rein­ven­tion and her regret­table capac­i­ty for self-delu­sion. We fol­low her through suc­ces­sive mar­riages and rela­tion­ships with very dif­fer­ent men and her grow­ing anx­i­ety for her two sons: Ari, a sub­stance abuser, and Yonatan, who frus­trates her with his lack of inter­est in women.

When rumors cir­cu­late in Israel about her infi­deli­ties and divorce and Leah sens­es her old friends with­draw­ing from her, she strug­gles to con­trol the nar­ra­tive and over­come her sense of iso­la­tion. At a cer­tain point, the read­er becomes aware of a more sub­tle sto­ry Arad is telling us about the ways women judge, and mis­judge, one anoth­er. We are not always sure who or what to believe, yet through Arad’s intri­cate use of innu­en­do and deflec­tion we learn to read between the lines. Leah is undoubt­ed­ly most her­self when writ­ing exclu­sive­ly to Mira, ​“my Wail­ing Wall, tak­ing in all my secrets and wish­es.” As the years pass, a per­va­sive sense of melan­choly beneath the hap­py chat­ter begins to take hold, but oth­er qual­i­ties emerge as well: Leah’s tenac­i­ty, resilience, end­less ener­gy, and unadul­ter­at­ed con­fi­dence in her­self. Even when we per­ceive the grow­ing gaps between self-delu­sion and real­i­ty as Leah’s roman­tic and mate­ri­al­ist dreams come crash­ing down, we come to appre­ci­ate her stub­born attach­ment to oth­ers, very much the embod­i­ment of E. M. Forster’s admo­ni­tion ​“Only connect!” 

An inge­nious­ly craft­ed nar­ra­tive, Hap­py New Years is a gen­uine tour de force; thrum­ming with haunt­ing imme­di­a­cy, it proves as end­less­ly inven­tive as Leah her­self. With­out any spoil­ers, it’s per­haps worth not­ing that in a final let­ter, filled with degrees of remorse but also hard-won self-knowl­edge, both Leah and the read­er come to under­stand the past in a star­tling­ly dif­fer­ent light. This new­found lay­er of com­pre­hen­sion brings even greater mean­ing to the bond she forms with Yonotan’s daugh­ter. Leah’s belat­ed rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Yonatan and accep­tance of his sex­u­al­i­ty adds anoth­er impor­tant lay­er. A poignant posthu­mous after­word, a ten­der col­lab­o­ra­tion between Leah’s son Yonatan and grand­daugh­ter, Ella, deliv­ers still oth­er sur­pris­es so that, up until the remark­able con­clu­sion, the twists and turns of Leah’s life con­tin­u­al­ly take on fresh mean­ings. In Man Book­er Inter­na­tion­al Prize recip­i­ent Jes­si­ca Cohen’s agile col­lo­qui­al ren­der­ing, the full force of Leah’s tumul­tuous and resilient life force shines through. Arad’s Hap­py New Years is a tri­umph of the epis­to­lary form and a pro­found­ly inci­sive ren­der­ing of gen­der pol­i­tics past and present. The bit­ter­sweet life of her extra­or­di­nary pro­tag­o­nist will sure­ly linger with read­ers well beyond the final page.