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| December 19, 2005 |
REVIEW: Matches
 War novels are not for everyone. War is a dirty thing, a taboo topic. In many books on the subject, authors struggle with capturing the reality of what is often a horrible situation. The author must also show the depth of the characters as they deal with their inner conflicts, as well as the external horrors of war. Alan Kaufman's latest novel Matches is a fictional account of Nathan Falk, an American-born Jew and the son of a Holocaust survivor, serving his three years in the Israeli Self Defense Forces. The book is loosely based on Kaufman's own tour of duty in the IDF as a combat infantry soldier.
Spread across 13 chapters that each deal with a separate IDF patrol, the gritty narrative follows Nathan as he deals with the stress of inactivity between patrols, the tension of ground operations in Arab-occupied territory, and the moral implications of waging a incessant war with an ancient and inexhaustible enemy. The other soldiers tease Nathan for coming to Israel to fight with them, "What brought you to this insane mess? Why join the army if you don't have to?" Nathan doesn't reveal his true intentions behind joining - a combination of his desire to be immersed in a "kinky-haired majority" and guilt - but he jokes with his comrades, "Truth is, once I saw you Israeli soldiers, Clint Eastwood Jews with big guns in your hands, man, I couldn't even pretend that I didn't want to serve."
Kaufman's prose is descriptive and rough. His sentences are weighted with the burden of truth, from the scenes of Falk's unit nervously stalking terrorists in the shadows of Tel Aviv, to Falk half-heartedly committing adultery with the wife of his best friend. By the end of the novel, I felt as though I had been with Falk and his unit in the dark orchard while we waited patiently for the sound of gunfire, expecting each breath to be our last. Kaufman's novel is an amazing testament of the spirit of the soldier and a fascinating exploration of the psyche of a man conflicted.
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