WEDNESDAY EVENINGS
Fiction, 2011
Seven people meet on Wednesday evenings in a conference room on the tenth floor of a Ramat Gan office building. They have nothing in common other than being parents -- not good enough parents, it seems to each of them. They are all seeking something: advice, answers, perhaps redemption. They have joined a support group run by Alma Farber, a psychologist known for her unconventional methods and anointed by the media as a miracle worker. Several of the participants will fall in love with her; in others she will provoke deep revulsion and fear.
Group therapy will bring them all emotional turbulence, shed light on dark corners of childhood, relationships with their parents, feelings towards their children and leave them fully exposed. They will begin asking themselves painful questions and find the answers to be far more painful. No one will emerge from these sessions the same person who went in, not even the therapist herself. In WEDNESDAY EVENINGS Yael Hedaya creates unforgettable characters, deconstructs them, and then reconstructs them with great insight and compassion.
Rights Sold:
Israel: Am Oved
Reviews:
“Is Yael Hedaya Israel’s best author? Her latest novel WEDNEDAY EVENINGS renders the question a rhetorical one. Since I read it over last weekend I can’t disengage from the characters she depicted with such sensitivity and intuition. Hedaya’s greatness is in her ability to weave a number of parallel plotlines which unlike Euclid’s lines converge eventually into one central plotline…”This is a hope- inducing book. It fills the heart with optimism of the kind that …some things are never too late to fix.” – Neri Livne, Ha’aretz
“In Hedaya’s book parenting is laid out in full view on the operating table. The author continues to demonstrate her skills as a writer in the world of psychology, as she did in writing some of the script for the successful Israeli version of the TV show ’In Treatment’.” – Prof. Amia Leiblich, Hebrew Psychoblogia
“Hedaya’s writing is telegenic… One of the reasons it is hard to put the book down is her ability to compel readers to visualize the story on their heads. It is easy to imagine how the characters and their apartments, crowded with possessions, look. This rich visual dimension is built upon simple codes familiar to the average readers from everyday life….Obviously it is not easy to write like this– few authors manage to create a believable and convincing micro-cosmos, and Hedaya’s skill arouses admiration.” – Shira Stav, Ha’aretz
“Psychologically the characters are quite authentic, their stories are told in a piercing and uncompromising manner and touch one’s heart. Hedaya’s writing is riveting; her diagnoses are sharp and her imagery original.” – Sara Sagi, The Marker
“Trying to save our children from our childhood’ so writes Yael Hedaya. The book provides much more than an addictive reading experience. Prepare yourselves for a free dive and a kind of rapture of the deep experience.” – Moran Kadussi, Att