Tamar Raphael​

 

​Born in 1989 in Petach Tikvah, Israel, Tamar lived in Tel Aviv and currently resides in Berlin. Her first book, a poetry collection titled Receding Songs, published in 2021, won her the Ministry of Culture Prize for Young Poets. Her debut novel, There Were Two with Nothing to Do, published in 2024, was received with rave reviews and won the Brener Prize’s honorable mention for a debut novel. Her poems and short stories were published in various journals, including Granta, Ho!, Hava LeHaba, Maayan, Moznayim and Panas. She worked as the literary critic of Time Out magazine and translated the novella Benigna Machiavelli by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She currently teaches Hebrew as a second language while working on her next novel, which will revolve around contemporaneous issues of immigration and memory.

​

There were Two with Nothing to Do

Novel

345 pp.

Publisher: Pardes

Year: 2024

 

Translation rights: World 

Audio visual rights: World

Translations:

​

Yiftach and Ellinor live together “in this city by the sea, which isn’t what it used to be”. Ellinor yearns to write, but can barely manage to read. Yiftach, whose advice is usually sound, tells her that the problem is that she’s searching for herself in every word, and so she endeavors to turn her gaze outward. He is a parliamentary assistant of an elected official, one of the good guys, as far removed from the ruling party as possible. He also tries to help Dana, his high school sweetheart, who returned to the city after many years abroad. Dana wants to get involved in politics, but it’s hard to enter a world that is slowly falling apart. Surrounding the protagonists are floating pieces of conversations, intertwined voices, phrases and sayings that are heard and understood out of context – all coming at a great price. There Were Two with Nothing to Do is a literary accomplishment, a meticulous and raw portrayal of the attempts of sensitive and intellectual young people to comprehend themselves, just before everything changes. In a poetically analytic language, the author describes a tangle of coming-of-age stories, trying to understand what roles her generation can fulfill at a time when politics and language become empty and hollow. This is not a story of dreamers being awakened to a fragile, ambivalent and violent reality, but a confrontation with this reality from an already disillusioned point of view. Bravery and cowardice are fused together and everyone seems to be circling themselves, searching for budding ambitions and trying to identify what prevents them from feeling fulfilled.

    

​

Critical Praise

 

Melancholy is a central element in this book, no less than its fairly minimalist plot. Raphael wrote a debut novel with a distinctive and well-crafted style, possessing a rhythm and atmosphere that transcend both place and historical context. Her style is so unique that one must pause and attempt to break it down: part of it is achieved through her insistence on not mentioning specific names. Her protagonists live in “the city by the sea”, Yiftach works at “the House of Representatives”, a colleague of his gets entangled in a controversy on “social media”, and significant historical events unfold in “our beloved superpower”. This choice imbues the novel with a sense of detachment and anonymity. Another aspect is Raphael’s sensitivity to words...

Added to this is her impressive ability to defamiliarize banal images, crafting marvelous descriptions... Together, these elements create an impression that is somehow both highly precise and entirely unspecific - a style that perfectly reflects the stagnation and sense of helplessness experienced by Yiftach and Ellinor…

Despite the lack of specificity in terms of time and place, There Were Two with Nothing to Do naturally lends itself to being read as a novel about generational disappointment. It explores the constraints of this particular time and place for people who had prepared themselves to live lives as the cultural and economic elite, only to find themselves struggling for small consolation prizes, such as publishing a book or securing a job as a parliamentary aide. But even though the setting is familiar and the message is easy to decipher, it would be a mistake to read the novel solely as a social and economic critique. Its true strength lies in its universality. The question “What’s wrong with her?” or “Why is this young, talented woman unhappy?” is a key motif recurring in literature throughout the generations. The answer to it is sometimes gendered, sometimes shaped by the era, and sometimes, there is no answer at all. In 1963, Sylvia Plath crafted an extraordinarily bleak depiction of a young woman's experience in The Bell Jar…

This dark image became a symbol of youthful depression. Plath’s protagonist, a brilliant and sought-after student accepted into a prestigious writing program at a New York magazine, experiences what appears from the outside to be a life of endless opportunities, akin to wandering through a candy store, yet from the inside, it feels like a desperate, Sisyphean struggle to carve out a path in an artificial and meaningless world. Raphael’s novel ends when its protagonist is 29, just before the final deadline to board the train of heteronormativity and settle into the expected path without paying too high a price. Raphael bids farewell to her readers with a kind of apology, noting that most of the book was written before the pandemic and before the war, making its small-scale story perhaps seem even smaller now. But this is precisely where its power lies, in its ability to depict a sincere and delicate human story about one person’s journey to find their place in the world.

Tzlil Avraham, Haaretz

 

This tension between independence and referencing, between freedom and alluding, is present in Raphael’s debut novel - a delightful and decadent work (in the best sense of the word). Ellinor, a frustrated aspiring writer, and her partner Yiftach, an idealistic functionary in a left-wing party (without explicitly saying “left-wing”), navigate a world of cultural references and parodic debates about privilege and social change - all within a specific radius of Tel Aviv (without explicitly saying “Tel Aviv”). And just as in Raphael’s poetry, in her prose as well, the act of writing and the search for a personal (or impersonal) style become the subject itself. As one character pointedly says to Ellinor: “What does that even mean, to write like someone else?…

You can’t write like anyone else, Ellinor. You can barely write like yourself”. There Were Two with Nothing to Do is an impressive performance of revelation and concealment, of playfulness and sincerity, capturing the spirit of a place and time that must remain unnamed.

Leo Gurevich, Haaretz

 

The novel’s protagonists meet and part, get together and break up, but above all, they search for a role that will define them and give them a sense of place - whether it’s saving the world, helping others, or simply doing something. An exception among these characters is Ellinor, who has neither a role nor a job, whose face absorbs the expressions of those around her, and who can barely be herself.

Motty Fogel, Yediot Aharonot

 

In the uncanny yet familiar world that Raphael constructs, nothing is stated explicitly, exactly as it is. Abstract ideas are lost in a tangle of words and sentences, simpler concepts are left unsaid, and even the most basic terms are replaced. Instead of Tel Aviv, there is “the city by the sea”; instead of a left-wing party, there are “our side” and “our camp”; instead of WhatsApp, there is “the instant messaging app”. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that this is more than just a clever stylistic choice. Layer by layer, Rafael builds an atmosphere of detachment - ironic and almost grotesque - where everyone, with a deep sense of self-importance, talks endlessly about very little. The characters occasionally recognize the slightly more complex language around them, yet they remain cocooned in a uniform, insular discourse, one that directly embodies the “right” messages, the indignation and righteousness of their worldview. For Ellinor, however, this discourse takes on a more private, physical, and often non-dialogic form…

Raphael’s linguistic and representational elusiveness, combined with her masterful command of Hebrew, is evident on every page, not just in her portrayal of public and cultural spaces but also in her depiction of personal experiences. Ellinor’s public silence - her constant wondering “what do they know that she doesn’t” - becomes both a barrier and an invitation into her inner world, brimming with hyper-awareness and sharp analytical insights. It would be easy to dismiss her life - struggling to read because she searches for herself in every word, struggling to write because writing requires an active interest in things outside oneself - as a portrait of privileged idleness. Similarly, Raphael’s attempt to characterize “the self-exploration of educated and sensitive young people, just before everything changes”, as described in the book’s back cover copy, could be seen as overly ambitious. But the novel proves that this ambition is justified, if only because these educated, sensitive young people manage to represent something far beyond the fragile boundaries, both literal and metaphorical, of greater Tel Aviv…

Ellinor’s struggle to find her place in the big city, in the wider world, among the so-called “great” people, serves as a reminder that this elusive space is not a matter of geography. The challenge of navigating space, any space, whether peripheral or central, bourgeois or bohemian, is always elusive, requiring interpretation and arrangement. Any deeply felt presence within a defined environment can serve as the foundation for a multifaceted process of both collapse (of ideologies, definitions, roles) and creation (of words, language, reality, experience)… Raphael presents an extremely impressive debut novel, distinguished by a strikingly personal style, a notable talent rich in sensitivity and aesthetic depth, and a masterful, intricate handling of the Hebrew language.

Yaacov Goldberg, MAKO

 

When I came across Tamar Raphael’s debut novel, I was glad to discover that it encompasses the authentic experiences of a generation of the here and now… There Were Two with Nothing to Do is a refreshing, different and intriguing novel… In the first person, and through a protagonist with a delicate soul and a clear-eyed gaze, Raphael depicts Ellinor’s hesitant steps with remarkable restraint, avoiding sentimentality or clichés. Drawing on both well-known and niche literary references, Raphael dissects the experiences of a woman struggling to find her place in the world, not only because of her age but also due to the endless national and political turmoil surrounding her. The novel grapples with everything that troubles young people in their early twenties: relationships, starting a family, career choices, and self-fulfillment. But when all these concerns persist in the shadow of political upheaval, it is the most personal, intimate form of agency that is truly put to the test. While reading, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Ronit Matalon’s distinctive writing, rooted in both a sharp human sensitivity and an incisive critical perspective. The novel raises fundamental questions that linger long after the last page: Who does the younger generation look up to? What are its personal and political role models? And in the end, what will prevail - fear or hope?

Sarai Shavit, Israel Hayom

 

The absence of hope is precisely the central theme of the novel. All the evasions that permeate the story - dodging action, avoiding strong opinions, shying away from commitment to either personal or collective goals - form its very core. Evasion is both the content, an indirect yet sharp political critique,  and the form: the novel articulates a different kind of poetics, one that might be called the poetics of disappointment. The language of the novel is steeped in avoidance, a deliberate distancing from direct engagement with things themselves. And yet, this constant circling around issues ends up drawing a bold outline around precisely what the text critiques. One of the novel’s defining historical moments is described in a way that not only disillusioned millennials will immediately recognize.

Shiri Shapira, Sfarim BeOtobusim

 

Ellinor’s indirect path, set apart from the race her peers are running, and, on the other hand, the helplessness of those runners and the futility of their efforts, are masterfully crafted in the novel. The plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, with every action deconstructed down to its smallest components, creating a sense of deceleration, distance, and suspension, as events seem to hover, stripped of their immediate meaning. This is, first and foremost, a poetic achievement, and Rafael’s strength as a poet is evident in descriptions such as: “I waited for the moment when the lilac-colored sun would be sucked into the water”…

The novel’s process of dismantling and reassembling mundane occurrences, or, in this case, a cliché like a sunset, not only forces readers to slow down and engage in active reading but also suggests that language itself does not fulfill its role. The separation between signifier and signified, the refusal to follow conventional linguistic paths, opens the door to new discoveries. A seemingly trivial description gains vividness in the reader’s mind’s eye, painting a living picture that reveals the underlying tension simmering beneath the surface of this strange situation…

At the same time, this prolonged focus, this close examination, paradoxically creates a sense of detachment, as if the narrative were lifted from an anthropological study. Indeed, there is perhaps something anthropological in Rafael’s gaze throughout the novel. The end result is a work of striking beauty, filled with sharp insights scattered throughout its pages.

Naama Israeli, HaPanas

​