Takeoffs and Landings, by Dana Zimmerman

2003, Modan Publishing, Ben-Shemen, Israel   (Hebrew Edition)     

This collection of well-crafted short stories by first-time author Dana Zimmerman was a serendipitous purchase in an airport gift shop. The title may have asserted a subtle influence on a rushed selection of in-flight reading, but I think in truth it was the cover graphic. Those eyes, those eyes.

Zimmerman is young, Israeli, urbane, highly-educated and female, despite which she has produced a work classical in feel and utterly innocent of  the current fashion for gratuitous gender malice.  Her protagonists act in good faith in the world as it is, not in some contrived utopia in  which heroic roles are re-gendered and biology dismissed. They struggle with love, growth,  sexuality, betrayal, infirmity and mortality as well we all have, and as did those who came before us. Zimmerman’s modernity is matter-of-fact rather than overbearing, a comfortable  background to tales spun with a linguistic economy that has the reader bringing her world to life in his head, a director actualizing a screenplay.  Indeed, Takeoffs and Landings begs for adaptation to the screen, not altogether astonishing in view of the author’s professional background in cinema and television.  I’ve encouraged such a project in my limited way, and hope for the best. 

Meanwhile, readers of contemporary  Hebrew literature should acquaint themselves with this rising virtuoso of the art of story. 

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