I was not as enamored of Love Life as the other reviewers. I was disappointed that it never occurred to the main character Yaara that she really needed psychiatric or psychological counseling to deal with her obsessions. There was no way the object of her love would ever fall in love with her, the way she pursued him like a stalker, without ever receiving any positive feedback from him. I never understood her attraction to him to begin with, I found him gross and disgusting from the very beginning, and she only realized at the end that he was also a violent cheating liar. The reader could have told her that long before. She apparently only liked him for his dark skin. She is an Ashkenazi Jew who has an attraction to the Eastern Jews, but she also seriously needed professional help.

Yaara views herself as a victim even though the consequences she suffered were due to the choices she made. She never seems to feel any shame or regret for the way she treated her husband. She is aware of the fact that he may not take her back after she abandoned him, but she does not feel sorry or remorseful, she only feels sorry for herself, she only sees things in terms of how they affect her. She is extremely self-centered and egotistical. At the end of the novel she has the nerve to compare herself to the woman in the Temple legend who was abandoned by both her husband and her lover. The only thing she had in common with the woman in the legend was that they were both a prisoner for three days. But Yaara left her husband, he did not leave her or abandon her, and she abused him when they lived together anyway, attacking him for little things. The woman in the legend may be a victim but Yaara is not. Yaara takes responsibility for her predicament to some degree, but she sees herself as being abandoned by both men in her life when that is not what happened, she left both of them.

In the middle of the book Yaara remembers shoplifting as a girl and bringing the booty to her mother to comfort her in her grief over losing a baby. The fact that the mother does not condemn her daughter for stealing is a clue as to why Yaara grew up to be a person without a conscience. Yaara’s mother read Bible stories to her when she was younger, and so both were very familiar with the Old Testament, but they apparently skipped over the Ten Commandments, where it says thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not lie. Yaara's character lied repeatedly throughout the book, and then she was angry when her lover lied to her. I am disappointed that people so familiar with the Bible ignored its moral lessons, and failed to transmit them to their children, and just took from the Bible what they wanted to use to rationalize their selfish behavior.

A wonderful book, compelling to read. I read it non-stop for three days and felt that I was flung into the haphazard world of the main character, Ya'ara. The writing is supurb. Descriptive, intimate and sometimes painfully easy to identify with. The situation is human and the characters are simple people who have all the complexities of those we know and love in our own lives. Bravo to Shalev! A must!

One of the most absorbing and alluring books I have read in a long time. This is an incredibly psychologically astute writer. She tells a wonderfully evocative and erotic tale of the power of desire for the unattainable and the unknown.

Having recently read a newspaper review, I looked forward to reading Husband and Wife. The premise of a crumbling marriage and disatisfaction with life was dealt with in a very unreal way. The characters never came alive for me. I toiled through each chapter, hoping that the potentially interesting story line would develop. It never did for me.

Shalev is an incredible writer. She describes the murky deep areas of human emotion. A place where few of us have the courage to go, even with our inner-most thoughts. Shockingly painful truths wallpaper this novel from beginning to end. For most mainstream americans, this will be a difficult book to read because there is not much of a storyline, compared with light-weight american novels. But the poetic inner-dialoge of the characters is very powerful, I did't want to put the book down. One enters into a kind of trance while reading it. A sad but true commentary on modern relationships.