Book Review: Alive and Beating

Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas

A hopeful, moving novel based on a true event

Rebecca Wolf’s Alive and Beating is a novel inspired by an historic event, tangentially related to the author herself. In 1995, a suicide bomber attacked the bus her childhood friend Alisa was on during a trip in Israel, and Alisa’s organ donation caused a shift in Jewish reservations about the practice, leading thousands to become organ donors. Through separate but interconnected fictional portraits, Wolf presents a vivid collage of life and family dynamics in Jerusalem at the time, imagining the circumstances of the beneficiaries of Alisa’s donations before their operation.

Very much a character-driven work, it’s important to discuss the people who make this story pulse. Leah Weiss is 21 years old with kidney disease and in need of hemodialysis. She lives with her large family in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community of Ramat Eshkol, where it is taboo to be seen as sick, so her mother forces her to go all the way to Tel Aviv for her incognito treatment. The young woman is conflicted about wanting to leave her conservative community.

In contrast, Yael Glassman, the single mother of a little girl, lives in a secular neighborhood, receiving help from her supportive parents who are Holocaust survivors. She has cystic fibrosis, and her body has rejected her previous lung transplant. Self-pity, regrets, and resentment weigh on her.

Hoda Ibrahim is a Palestinian in East Jerusalem, the sole moneymaker of her family, working at a beauty salon next to the city’s border wall. Though her parents are traditional Muslims, her mother would bring Vogue magazine for her to go through when she was little. Hoda has been on the transplant waiting list for 8 months, her body breaking down due to polycystic kidney disease.

After the three women, the book moves to three men. David Sassoon is the son of Jewish immigrants from Iraq who moved to Israel after the Holocaust. He has been suffering from chronic liver disease for 12 years. Though his wife is supportive, David’s condition has corroded their relationship.

Father Severin McConnell is an Irishman in the Fransiscan Order, sent to Jerusalem as a watcher of the holy Christian sites. More importantly, he has been using his time entertaining the sick at the hospital. His diabetes has put him in need of a new pancreas. Alive and Beating is a book of disparate stories, of wide-ranging truths, of disease and health.

Lastly, we see Youssef and Yosef, two hospital roommates who suffer from severe heart conditions. The two boys have formed a strong friendship, and their having the same name, one in its Muslim and one in its Jewish form, is no symbolic accident. Their discussion is tinged with teenage life and tragedy, moving from liking boobs to who is deserving of the next available heart.

Alive and Beating adroitlygrapples with the role of faith and doubt in the face of disease. Poignant and effective, it deals with the discord between traditional communities and the acceptance of chronic illness.  

Perhaps most powerfully, the novel depicts the impact of disease on families and individuals with affecting realism. And yet hope abounds in this heartfelt book. It’s a nuanced discussion worthy of thoughtful attention.

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