Reviews for Auld Licht Idylls

The average rating for Auld Licht Idylls based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-12 00:00:00 Eric Prendergast You will notice that every description of this book talks about Israel. That is because Tel is masterful at setting the scene and choosing an interesting backdrop, and the location of these stories is probably the biggest selling point for the book. This collection of short stories is set entirely in Israel, but the stories are otherwise unrelated and run the gamut of plots - love, mystery, humor. They're all written well from a technical standpoint, but my problem with the book is that the author (and hence the reader) seems distanced from the tales - I felt no emotional reaction at all. Thinking back on the stories now, I find myself questioning my initial two-star rating and saying, "but this one was interesting; and remember this one!; and that one was so unusual" - but then I flip open the book again and remember the experience of reading each, and there's just no spark. It's not a bad book, but nothing I can particularly recommend, either.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-04-27 00:00:00 Bob Pritekel What these stories all have in common is Israel, a place so packed with polarity and conflict that bizarre juxtapositions are ordinary. A terrorist on his mission is waylaid by a tourist couple asking for a photograph. An orthodox girl's rendez-vous with destiny is derailed by a commonplace transaction. The richness and variety of these bizarre collisions of the mundane is Tel's theme. It's a step back from the pathos or politics that it would be easy to fall into regarding the conflicts there. Narrated in cool, articulate, humane and often funny prose, the tales play expertly with different formats to reveal how minor the differences of stylistic posturing actually are.