By Donald H. Harrison

The Green Beach by Catherine Hand, InfinityPublishing.com, 2006, 302 pages, $16.95

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — At one point in this novel, a former set designer for the San Diego Opera paints a  mural of the Ein Hod art colony in which her Israeli acquaintances are pictured dancing the Hora.  Describing the art work, novelist Catherine Hand writes that the subjects were grouped "according to their aspirations and collusions, but to make it all less obvious, she switched heads and bodies. The switching was a commentary on the relationships and only those privy to the secrets would ever be able to read the significance of the placements."

The same might be said about The Green Beach  if one were to attempt to read the work as a roman à clef.  We could spend our time trying to figure out whom, if anyone, at the San Diego Opera she is writing about, but to do so would divert us unnecessarily from consideration of the fascinating character whose experiences we may assume mirror those of Hand's own life, albeit with some of the heads and bodies switched.

Whoever she is, the middle aged protagonist is desperately lonely.  The men with whom she can settle down can't perform sexually; the ones who can fulfill her sexually have no interest in settling down. She shuttles from one country to another, one man to another, one frustration to another.  In the assumption that Hand is writing about herself, I won't be surprised if many a widower and divorced man comes a-courting; rarely has a woman been so frank in print about her ability and need to love so fully and loyally.  

Green Beach is a set of dunes along the Mediterranean where the protagonist trysts with one of her lovers; a man who is as untamed as the stallion he lets out for stud.  If her excursions to Israel had dealt only with the sexual side of her life, we would have been cheated because another strength of this unorthodox novel is her at times acerbic commentary about the people of Israel. Her heart goes out to the Ethiopian Jews and she is sympathetic to Druze and Bedouin villagers. That same heart is hardened against the haredi.  For the most part, however, her interactions are with secular Israelis who, like her, must scratch out their livings in a country that like its fabled sabra (cactus) is prickly on the outside, but allegedly sweet on the inside.  

The protagonist's mother—visiting Israel from the United States—agrees "it is very beautiful, this land of the Jews; but I have never gotten down on my knees for anybody's piece of real estate, and I'm not starting now."  Her sexually incapable, opera set-designing,  non-Jewish former husband, with whom she still lives occasionally in San Diego, says of Israel: "I don't think much of the people, but I like the stones."  

Her own verdicts often are just as negative: "She had observed how Israeli mothers spoiled their sons. These sons were raised to be soldiers; and the women of Israel, especially the first two generations in the new Israeli State, treated them like gods. As a result, the men treated the women like doormats and young modern women especially had a hard time.  Israeli girls as a group were tough and demanding.  There were few romantics amongst them, especially the Sephardic girls who had seen their brothers given preference over them in everything.  Women were expected to marry at an early age, to have many children and work for the family.  Even though mandatory military service was required of women as well as men, the army for women was more of a marriage broker than front-line military duty."

And this conversation between the protagonist and an Eastern European immigrant to Israel has the ring of truth. "'Do you know what I like about being an Israeli?' Michaela said.  'No, tell me.' 'This is what I like.  When I lived in Romania they called me a Jewish bitch, but here in Israel, I am just a bitch.'  She laughed with her rival, but took her joke as a warning."

Green Beach is a novel with a unique story line, written by someone who has experienced too much to mask her feelings. You may not agree with the choices her protagonist makes in her life, and perhaps will take exception to some of her political opinions, but you will admire her independence.   A Hand for Catherine!