What’s Free Fruit For Young Widows all about?:
In Free Fruit For Young Widows, a father is telling his son the reasons why he is able to forgive a former colleague’s murderous rampage during the war.
What did I think?:
I’m not going to lie, some of the stories in this collection have been very up and down for me. The title story – What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank was wonderful and I had high hopes for the collection then a couple of the others were just “okay.” However, Nathan Englander has chosen to end this collection with a powerful, hugely emotional short story that has made me look at his writing in a whole different way. Although fairly short, it packs an almighty punch and for me, made for some very uncomfortable reading moments, mainly because of the subject matter which greatly affected me being a pacifist and vehemently against war. However, anyone who knows me well will understand that I love fiction that challenges my own views as a reader and evokes an emotion within me, whether negative or positive and I adore when an author is able to do that to me.
Free Fruits for Young Widows is about a father and son – Shimmy and Etgar who own a fruit and vegetable stand in Jerusalem. Shimmy often gives free fruit to war widows as a matter of respect and honor but he also does the same for an old soldier colleague of his, Professor Tendler. After finding out more about Tendler, Shimmy’s son Etgar is aghast that his father would give him free fruit at all. You see, while his father was at war, Tendler brutally and without hesitation killed four soldiers while they were sitting having their lunch. Shimmy asks why he would do such a thing – why not just take them prisoner? In return, Tendler beats Shimmy violently, permanently altering the shape of his face. Etgar cannot help but despise Tendler for what he did to his father but then Shimmy proceeds to explain why exactly Tendler has his forgiveness and why he continues to give him free fruit on a regular basis. It’s some story, let me tell you!
Of course I’m not going to go into the reasons why Tendler is given a reprieve for his previously horrific behavior during the war but if you’re at all intrigued I would definitely urge you to seek this little story out. Although it did not change my opinions about killing or war in the slightest it opened my eyes onto what young men were exposed to during the atrocities of battle. In fact, it might have even solidified my opinions about war and about how evil I find it to be. I may not have necessarily agreed with Tendler’s ways of dealing with a situation, especially at one point in the narrative (which was truly gut-wrenching) but I certainly sympathised with the things that he must have seen while serving in the army during a period of history I often wish could be completely erased and have never happened at all.
Would I recommend it?:
But of course!
Star rating (out of 5):
NEXT SHORT STORY: Monte Verità by Daphne du Maurier from the collection The Birds And Other Stories.
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