Pumpkinflowers

Starred review from March 21, 2016
Friedman, an Israeli journalist and writer, recounts the history of a hilltop bunker in southern Lebanon that was held by the Israeli army during the 1990s, beginning with the biography of a young soldier stationed there and transitioning into a memoir of his own time on the hill and his post-war visit as a tourist. Friedman’s personal reflections alternate with a history of Israel’s conflict in Lebanon, which he refers to as an unnamed and forgotten war, as he covers civilian sentiment, political responses to war and protest, and military strategy through the period. Though short, the book is remarkably educational and heartfelt: Friedman’s experiences provide a critical historical perspective on the changing climate of war in the Middle East, shifting from short official conflicts into longer unwinnable wars full of guerilla tactics and the deliberate creation of media narratives and images. His lyrical writing, attention to detail, and personal honesty draw the reader into empathy along with understanding. Friedman’s memoir deserves wide readership.

March 15, 2016
Powerful account of youthful Israelis maturing, fighting, and dying at a forgotten Lebanon outpost. In this limber, deceptively sparse take on the Middle East's tightening spiral of violence, Friedman (The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible, 2012) combines military history and personal experience on and off the line in deft, observant prose. The narrative is reminiscent of novels by Denis Johnson and Robert Stone, linking combat's violent absurdity to the traumatized perspectives of individual participants. Friedman covers the period from about 1994 to 2000, and most of the action takes place at a fortified border emplacement, nicknamed the Pumpkin, meant to prevent guerrilla incursions from southern Lebanon. The author notes that he and his predecessors found themselves "in a forgotten little corner of a forgotten little war, but one that has nonetheless reverberated with quiet force in our lives....Anyone looking for the origins of the Middle East of today would do well to look closely at these events." In the first section, Friedman dramatizes the experiences of an early unit serving there, focusing on Avi, a soldier who fulfills the infantry archetype of the rebellious miscreant who was changed by vicious combat, here against an increasingly professionalized Hezbollah. Avi's death in a helicopter accident fueled the civilian peace movement, represented by the anguish of the mothers of such casualties. Yet, as Friedman discovered during his own tour of the Pumpkin, the enemy they faced was quietly mutating: "Israel found itself facing an enemy other than the one it thought it was fighting." Throughout, the author grapples with questions regarding both Israeli aggression and the nature of the state's survival. In a chilling final section, he chronicles his travels as a Canadian tourist to his former combat zone in Lebanon, encountering friendly residents in thrall to Hezbollah and seething with anti-Semitism. A haunting yet wry tale of young people at war, cursed by political forces beyond their control, that can stand alongside the best narrative nonfiction coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Starred review from February 15, 2016
Writing out of a surprising sense of gratitude, Friedman gives thanks for what he learned by serving in the late 1990s as an Israeli soldier assigned to a vulnerable hilltop fortress in Lebanon called the Pumpkin. Above all, the Pumpkin taught Friedman that a frighteningly thin line separates him from soldiers who perished during the Lebanon conflict, soldiers like the free-spirited writer Avi, whose life ended in a tragic helicopter crash. But then the Pumpkin repeatedly exposed realities hidden behind conventional boundaries. Readers marvel, for instance, at how battlefield events dissolve beneath the illusion of media images captured by a Hezbollah cameraman. The definitions separating soldier from civilian also repeatedly fade as the guerrillas threatening the Pumpkin vanish into village populations and as Israeli mothers spearhead a pacifist movement forcing military planners to abandon their strategies. Even the hard division pitting Israeli against Arab softens when Friedman recognizes a genial countenance in the photograph of a dead Hezbollah fighter. Disturbingly, however, readers finally contemplate the way Israel's failed incursion into Lebanon has catalyzed a new regional turbulence, vaporizing hopes for peace between Israelis and Arabs and plunging Syria, Iraq, and their neighbors into a cauldron of chaos. A compelling narrative, freighted with explosive geopolitical implications.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from April 15, 2016

Recipient of the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Award for The Aleppo Codex, Jerusalem-based reporter Friedman here turns his attention to war in this memoir documenting his time with an Israeli platoon in Lebanon in the 1990s. Most of the action takes place in battles atop a highly contested hill nicknamed Pumpkin, with flowers referring to a military term for casualties. Friedman's history of the conflict provides insight into a soldier's life in that region, the cultures of the area, and the politics and repercussions of war. The constant threat of roadside bombs adds a sense that death hovers over the fighters, all amid a political climate that makes it difficult to determine heroes from villains, or if there are such things at all. Short chapters make this account fast and engaging, as if Friedman were clicking through a slideshow, describing each scene with great heart and detail. VERDICT A compelling war memoir containing elements of terror, observation, boredom, and grim (at times absurd) humor. This is an excellent read for anyone interested in military memoirs or biographies, war reporting, and the modern Middle East.--Benjamin Brudner, Curry Coll. Lib., Milton, MA

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