Scream Queens of the Dead Sea: Sex! Heavy Metal! Linguistics!

I am so grateful that Gilad Elbom decided to write his first novel in English. I can't imagine reading this book in translation (but if English is not your first language, I'm sure the translations still stay true to form). Gilad's ability to effortlessly draw me into his make-believe(?) world is really what I enjoyed most about Scream Queens. Some compare Scream Queens to a ride on a roller coaster. I'd agree, and add that it left me panting, excited to read Mr. Elbom's second book. This is a fun, accessible book for anyone who wants a glimpse into many minds crazier than their own. Plus, you get a rear-view-mirror glance at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from one underexposed Israeli perspective. You should read this book. It fills up your senses.

Enter Gilad Elbom, purveyor of dark ramblings and metal-infused interludes, straight from the heart of Israel. In this freshman release from an up-and-coming literary powerhouse we find Elbom, also the main character of Scream Queens, reflecting on his life inside a mental hospital as an assistant nurse. Through driven dialogue and off-beat characters we plunge into a world of mental instability and quirky obsessions where we are often lost between insanity and reality. A fun, tight novel told through the eyes of a self-deprecating (albeit self-involved) Israeli national, Scream Queens of the Dead Sea is bound to be a cult hit.

i've pretty much given up hope in the novel these days--but this one restores some faith. the german version has a much better cover, but you've gotta read it in english to get the jokes. vive!

First of all, some reviews I've read appear to want to make much of the book's status as "metafiction." Yes, here the metafiction works--but why? It seems that in this novel metafiction has finally reached a point where it's not even "experimental" anymore; it serves a simple artistic purpose. Because the book deals so much with mental illness, I understood metafiction simply as the acknowledgement that this is Gilad Elbom's (properly meaning here the character of the same name as the author, which of course is no accident, but anyway...) way of acknowledging that this is not an authoritative reality he is weaving but, largely, a record of his own complexes confronting a sort of "given" outside himself. The metafiction is not overbearing; for the most part it reads as a straightforward fictional narrative, and a fun one too. The plot centers around an era of Elbom's life when he works in a mental hospital in Israel and its setting both inside and outside of this hospital. Elbom records his experiences on the inside mainly as the social interactions he has with, and observes between, six patients whose illnesses/quirks have been covered elsewhere. On the "outside" Elbom records his experiences with Carmel, a married woman waiting for her terminally ill husband to die; with a man who had his vehicle "drafted" by the Israeli army; with said army as they, in their way, "draft" Elbom's vehicle by asking (forcing) him to take soldiers between bases; with a very friendly, hospitable Arab associated with HAMAS who collects motorcycles and goes into an unexpected (even somewhat feminist?) disquisition on ancient epic poetry; etc. (Read the book!) Such episodes are interrupted or embellished by Elbom's fascinations, obsessions, complexes: heavy metal, sexual fantasies of an occasionally bizarre nature, and (maybe most of all?) linguistics. The book is driven by dialogue; in fact, it seemed to me the dialogues were the whole "point" of the novel, at least for me. If you simply excerpted a dialogue without any reference to characters, who would be speaking? Would they be the "mentally ill" or the "sane"? Cinematically speaking, the dialogues were reminiscent of both the lighter Monty Python and the more philosophical Richard Linklater, often at the same time. And it was this tension between the serious and the zany that is not only highly entertaining, but begs the question: Who is insane and why? Is a society plagued with inter-ethnic and interreligious violence "sane" while a man incapable of believing in anything "crazy"? It is fascinating to think about, and *Scream Queens of the Dead Sea* offers a lot of food for thought, especially (I thought) in the last chapter. All throughout the novel I was trying to find something concretely inferior about this novel, yet I was having such a good time reading it. I have to give it 5 stars out of 5; this book was my sort of thing. I'm happy I read it.

Gilad's stream of consciousness pulls you in. This book is fascinating on many levels, from the first hand account of modern day Israel as seen through the eyes of a candid and cynical young writer to the hard core sex scenes. The collection of unlikely characters will keep you guessing as to who is sane and who is not. In this must read novel you will meet an intelligent HAMAS activist, a man who spent his whole life sleeping for a living, a silent ethiopian girl and many more chararcters. All this together with the references to grammer and heavy metal will keep you wanting more.