Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen.
Eli is a translator. His wife has died and his children have fled the nest, and it seems to him that the best times of his life have already passed.
That is until a friend introduces him to a cellist called Lia. She’s surprising, intriguing, and as tender bonds of unexpected love form, the promise of fresh beginnings brings high stakes, and a sense of renewal too.
Lia has one other passion in her life apart from her music; her dog. She entrusts Eli to look after him while she is on tour, but he makes a catastrophically careless mistake that puts their relationship in danger. Faced with admitting the truth which could drive Lia away forever, Eli decides to hide from her about what really happened. This lie will start to suffocate him. And soon, a canny police detective with a penchant for Simenon notices inconsistencies in his story, and begins to close in.
One Before Last is a love story that spirals into something else entirely, a sharp moral reckoning with the stories we tell to hide from reality.
Eli is a translator. His wife has died and his children have fled the nest, and it seems to him that the best times of his life have already passed.
That is until a friend introduces him to a cellist called Lia. She’s surprising, intriguing, and as tender bonds of unexpected love form, the promise of fresh beginnings brings high stakes, and a sense of renewal too.
Lia has one other passion in her life apart from her music; her dog. She entrusts Eli to look after him while she is on tour, but he makes a catastrophically careless mistake that puts their relationship in danger. Faced with admitting the truth which could drive Lia away forever, Eli decides to hide from her about what really happened. This lie will start to suffocate him. And soon, a canny police detective with a penchant for Simenon notices inconsistencies in his story, and begins to close in.
One Before Last is a love story that spirals into something else entirely, a sharp moral reckoning with the stories we tell to hide from reality.