Moods

Part novel and part memoir, Yoel Hoffmanns Moods is flooded with feelings, evoked by his family, losses, loves, the souls hidden powers, old phone books, and life in the Galileewith its every scent, breeze, notable dog, and odd neighbor. Carrying these shards is a general tenderness, accentuated by a new dimension brought along by that great big pill of Prozac. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, Moods is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fictiona small marvel of a book, and with its pockets of joy, a curiously cheerful book by an author who once compared himself to a praying mantis inclined to melancholy.