With life I play a lot' is the story of three strong women, ninety-year-old Vera, her daughter Nina, and her granddaughter Gili. A bitter and silent affair poisons their lives, tearing them apart and slamming them together for decades. Until they have no choice, and they set out - together with Rafael, Nina's eternal lover, and Gili's father - on a journey to the penal island of Goli Otok, located off the coast of Croatia. In this harsh and arid place, decades ago, things started to go wrong. Here Vera was imprisoned and tortured with hard labor, because she refused to betray her dead husband and declare him an 'enemy of the people'. Here absolute loyalty and excruciating betrayal were fused together. The four are swept away on a journey of bare emotion to the horror and love and kindness that only families can derive from it. It is a story about a wound that is passed from generation to generation, and about the terrible power of a secret, and about a love that does not fade even many years after the beloved is no longer alive. Grossman wrote a rare book, which derives its strength from the unexpected nature of the actions and words of his characters - one-off characters, the uniqueness of each of them, and especially of the relationships between them, continues to fascinate and amaze many days after the end of reading. The fictional story told here is partially based on a woman who was: Eva Panich Nahir - who inspired the character of Vera - was David Grossman's soulmate, and she is the one who told him over and over again, for twenty years, the unbelievable story about her life and love.
