Obsession and Confusion in The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God

Etgar Keret's book of short stories follows the daily frustrations and confusions of its modern Israeli characters with a healthy dose of anger as well as confusion.

While Keret's characters range from schoolboys to hired assassins, I can empathize with many of their emotions, and while his plot lines border on the surreal, their blatancy becomes violently realistic.

In the first story, a man who is down on his luck and always late to everything is given the good fortune of being the only man who a most punctual bus driver will wait for. When this man is stood up on a date and doesn't even run after the bus, it still waits for him. This Israeli story hits close to home. Another story follows a boy whose parents try to teach him the value of a shekel by buying him a piggy bank instead of a Bart Simpson doll. But the boy grows to love the pig itself and rather than let his parents smash it with a hammer, he sets the pig free in a field. This story feels like the story of an American boy.

Other stories get more bizarre, like the story of a man, whose mother's cancerous uterus is removed and put on display in a museum, and his obsession with his place of fetal origin. Another man wishes for a friend who is an angel. When the angel actually arrives, the angel turns out to be a liar and in the end, not even an angel at all. One woman falls in love with a man who comes out of the gate to Hell, which is located next to her house.

Still other stories get political, like the story of an Israeli soldier who finally beats to death a taunter to avenge the death of his friend. He argues that as long as he plays the same game as the other side, he can't lose. One boy who visits a Holocaust museum is taught that buying things from Germany is an insult to his Jewish ancestors. Another boy is almost beat up by two other boys on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Keret's short stories hit home, making me consider the complexities of the everyday lives of Israelis. These are as fresh and moving as any modern American stories.