The People of Forever Are Not Afraid

The book tells the story of three young Israeli girls who have graduated from high school and are preparing to enter their two-year military service in the Israel Defense Force. The remote Israel-Palestine border town where they live hasn't prepared them for the surreal and often bizarre experience of modern military life, especially when men and women train and serve together. The book switches between all three girls as narrators of their experience, making the book into a character study of each girl and their individual struggle to understand and assimilate their experiences.

The switching points-of-view and disjointed timeline of the plot, switching between past and present, makes the story difficult to follow at times and takes some effort to get into. But, life in the military with a multilayered bureaucracy and gender issues weighing in, is difficult to understand and often makes no sense or is simply ridiculous. Maybe this is why the 25-year-old author, who served in the IDF, knows what she is writing about and is adept at making that surreal quality a theme that drives the story.

I'd suggest this book to readers interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the IDF during the 2006 Lebanon war and how Israeli individuals might have experienced the conflicts. But, the book is more about the human consequences of war and prolonged conflict, rather than an accurate study of the event.