Etgar Keret: The Nimrod Flip-Out

Reviewed by KAPKA KASSABOVA

One of the highlights at the Wellington Festival of the Arts was reportedly Etgar Keret's appearance, at which he asked his host John Campbell to read Fatso - the first story in this Israeli writer's new collection.

In it, the narrator meets the woman of his dreams, who has one small idiosyncrasy: at night, she turns into a fat, hairy, obnoxious guy. After the initial shock, our narrator befriends the guy and they do blokey things together, while the "real" relationship blossoms in the day. This is one of the memorable stories, and also one of the more profound.

Thirty-something Keret is a hugely popular writer and personality in Israel, and has been publishing fiction for 12 impressive years. He has been described in one breath as a "court jester" and "the national conscience" of his country. Indeed it is hard to read a modern Israeli writer without finding some political subtext.

The story The Nimrod Flip-Out is a tale of three friends who begin to experience "flip-outs", or nervous breakdowns, for no apparent reason. Except that Nimrod, the fourth friend in this relaxed, aimless bunch shot himself in the head while serving in the army years ago. But, disappointingly, he was a paper-pusher, and his motive wasn't some sort of political trauma, but romantic heart-break.

Surprise Eggs is a gut-wrenching story about a woman killed in a suicide bomb-attack, and her husband who has to identify her in the morgue by her foot.

Keret is capable of tackling big themes, even tragedy, but shies away from them in the other stories. Although his style is palatably light and uncomplicated ("Until he turned 12, Nimrod was a shitty person"), and his narrators are recognisably young, idle, and slightly lost, these disarming devices often mask an emotional hollow in his fiction.

These stories' surrealism, brevity and snappy urban themes could have been comparable to Japanese master-of-the-weird Murakami, if only they had something new to say.

A man watches his naked girlfriend sunbathe on the communal lawn; a man without a head is found by a bunch of kids; a quickly growing boy's parents are shrinking; a little girl wants to have glittery eyes. The imaginative spark of these promising scenes is only too often extinguished by the intellectual blankness and the self-conscious casualness of the narrative.

Keret excels as a stylist and that's about it. For the moment, the court jester is pointing in a safe direction, but I will look out for his next book.

* Picador, $24.95