My Michael by Amos Oz

I don't usually enjoy psychological novels - that is, novels that examine the inner workings of a person in all their frustrated glory and natural instincts. I find them hard to grasp, which I think is only natural as the topic is the frailty and subjectivity of humanity. I find that action moves the plot forward at a much faster, calculated (though not predictable) pace than thoughts can. Such was the case in My Michael, where most of the action took place inside the mind, in dreams and underlying desires of Hannah, the storyteller, as she looks back on her marriage with Michael over the course of ten years. Because Hannah was both the narrator and a character in her own story, I was wary of the one-sided viewpoint. Later, I came to appreciate that the novel was not about great action and movement, but about the quiet and often violent interior of a wife, victim, lover, woman, and above all a human being.

Throughout the story of their estranged, polarized marriage, there is a hint that something terrible and vital is happening underneath the surface of Hannah and Michael's relationship. Michael's first article published in a journal is called 'Processes of Erosion in the Ravines of the Wilderness of Paran', as if a signal of the slow, inevitable fragmentation of their marriage (101). He attempts to elucidate the meaning of his work to Hannah and prove that his paper cannot help but be "dry" because of the subject nature. His description is subtly both one of geomorphology and psychology. The phrase, "different and even opposed factors cooperate in forming and changing...underground features which we cannot perceive" suggests both the processes of the earth's formation and the turmoil hidden underneath Hannah's idealism of marriage and daydreams. Perhaps it is also a reflection of the inner frustrated desires and confusion that Michael has because of Hannah. He concludes that the principle of modern day geomorphology "seems to ascribe the formation of the world to a perpetual conflict", but doesn't attempt to explain the origin of those conflicting patterns (102). Is this a sign of resignation from Michael on the state of their marriage? Are they fated to be in eternal conflict and secret desires because of uncontrollable forces in themselves?

There is much depth and subtly in the novel that one cannot garner from the first reading. To be sure, the initial reading was confusing and baffling, partly because I was anticipating a novel of action, not contemplation (that is not to say that there were no actions, but that the actions were more like the visible manifestations of another driving force - similar to geomorphological processes). Furthermore, I was intrigued by the interrelatedness within their relationship. Each of their respective families plays an important role in their present relationship. Michael's father is a definite presence in the novel who "refused to recognise that his son was an ordinary young man" (6). His father wanted him to carry on the family legacy, as if "the chain could pass on from one generation to another" (6). Curiously enough, both Hannah and Michael shared their family stories on their first date, suggesting that marriage is not between two individuals but two families. For Hannah, her father passed away when she was young. I cannot help but wonder if her attachment to Michael was a replacement for a stable male figure in her life. There are other forms of interrelatedness that are in the novel. Not only are family histories a part of the puzzle, but also are the ideals of marriage, the rigid schema for male and female roles, parent-child relationships, and other variations on family systems psychology.