The Hope

The Hope – by Herman Wouk

Before reading this book, the only other books I read by this author were “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” -  a two volume saga of a family engulfed by the second world war.  With this book (and its follow up “The Glory”, which I have not yet read), it’s very obvious that Herman Wouk is copying the exact same formula and using it here.  This book details the Jews’ struggle after they returned to their homeland in 1948, and all of its bullying Arab neighbors that want to evict and annihilate their neighbors for the sole reason that they’re Jewish.

Being that the author is Jewish himself and was alive and well during these events, it’s very obvious that he’s a perfect person to write about such events which take place from 1948 up until the 6 Day War in 1967.  It helps that Mr. Wouk is an outstanding writer, as he does the narrative justice by incorporating fact with fictional characters.  Like the previously mentioned books, he also adds some of the famous Israelite figures to his story.  Some of the major ones include David Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meier among several others.  This book really isn’t their story, however.  He doesn’t use these people as mere historical references in the book.  No, they actually interact with the main (fictitious) heroes of the story in order to give to reader a better understanding of the feelings and the conflicts that existed.

Our two main heroes are young, twenty somethings at the beginning of the story (this is so we can grow old with them through this books’ 20 year tenure as well as the follow up book).  Zev Barak and Don Kishote are our protagonists.  Actually “Don Kishote” isn’t his real name – he has several names/monikers throughout the book – a Hebrew thing, I guess, and I really don’t remember his many other labels.  We see our two heroes on the battlefield, with the above mentioned real people, and their limited home lives as well.  All of this is good, but it’s the personal lives of these two individuals that sapped a lot of the enjoyment out of this book for me.

SPOILER ALERT: Now, perhaps my standards of morality are higher than many, but I don’t like reading about characters that I am supposed to admire get engaged in frivolous infidelities.  Zev, for example has a beautiful wife and beautiful children.  Well, one day when Zev travels to the United States, he meets an associate that has a 12 year old daughter.  The young girl is obviously very smitten with this young chap about 10 years her senior.  So, she follows him around, corresponds with him and makes sure she’s available every time he visits the States to confer with her father.  As the years go by, she’s no longer 12, and the innocent infatuation seems to turn into an unhealthy obsession.  Zev is aware of it.  Does he put an end to it?  No, he does not.  So obviously, as history teaches us time in time again, her feelings are eventually reciprocated and Zev is well down the path of marital infidelity.   What’s really sad is it never seems to really bother him, and there never seems to be any unhappiness with his wife that would warrant such unforgivable behavior.  Oh sure, he knows it’s wrong and he wrestles a bit with his conscious from time to time, but I lost a lot of respect for this character that I’m supposed to like.   

Don Kishote has somewhat similar romantic issues as well, and at times it feels like Herman Wouk feels he can’t quite tell a great story without involving elements of sleazy soap operas (this happened as well with his two World War II books).  The whole romantic tryst element seemed to make me appreciate this book a bit less than I had hoped.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy personal stories with the action, I just wish his characters could have had a bit more moral guidance with some of their choices.  Maybe I’m a prude, but I don’t find myself thinking this after many books.

My conclusion is that this book was “good” yet not “great”.  Sadly, I’m in no real rush to read the follow up novel any time soon.  I would recommend that you start with “Winds of War” and then “War and Remembrance” first.  I seem to recall that each of those books were either close to, or more than 1,000 pages.  They were worth it though.   This work was only about 650 pages, and, sadly it seemed a lot longer.