Suddenly, Love by Aharon Appelfeld

In this beautiful novel by Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, we experience the pain, suffering and hopefully calm that can come with self-discovery. Apppelfeld’s wisdom permeates this story as we witness the psychological shifts that can occur in a person whose early life choice inflicted suffering on those he loved. Appelfeld’s sparse and elegant prose gives us a window into the hearts of two tormented souls. 

Ernst is a seventy-year-old Red Army veteran who was born in Ukraine and now lives in Israel. A former investment advisor, he spends his days writing unpublished novels.  Ernst searches for words that will explain to himself his youthful choices that caused his parents, wife and daughter pain. While he was betraying his fellow Jews and fighting for the communists in Russia, his family perished in the Holocaust. When he was a young man, “The thought that he was freeing people from the prison of religion-inspired him to act.” 

Each day he writes and each day, he throws work in the garbage.

But since Ernst’s operation two years ago, Irena, his 32- year old caretaker, comes to his small apartment every day. Initially, she assists him with his physical needs, but as time passes, she becomes his confidant and confessor. The ghosts of WWII haunt her life too. Her parents were in concentration camps and Irena was born in a German displaced person camp. She and her parents immigrated to Israel, where Irena still lives in her family’s apartment. Since her parents passed away, Irena continues to set the table for three on the Sabbath and other Jewish Holidays. In dreams and memories, she talks with her parents and they communicate with her. Though uneducated, Irena draws on a well of deep spirituality and believes that “life is a continuum that extends into the unknown.” 

But Ernst’s family has no presence in his life. He has not been able to dream or even remember them. He has repressed his early years. Due to Irena’s love and loyalty, Ernst’s parents and grandparents return to Ernst’s memory.  He stops throwing his writing in the trash. “Irena’s presence, her closeness, opens corridors for him to worlds he never knew.”  Soon, he remembers tender times he spent as a young boy in the Caspian mountains with his wise and devout grandparents. He remembers how his grandfather, an observant Jew, taught him to appreciate the rituals and reverence for G-d. All of which he forgot or repressed when he became a Communist. 

Though I believe therapy might have been more productive for Ernst than the slow, plodding process of writing, especially at the dawn of his life. However, Appelfeld’s, Suddenly Love, celebrates the power of human connection and the power of writing to heal.