"For more than twenty years Yoel Ravid worked for the Israeli secret service, going on dangerous missions to Helsinki, Vienna, Bangkok. His uncanny instinct, his ability to sense the truth, his power to remember the smallest detail made him an invaluable agent."Almost fifty, Yoel is now widowed and retired. He has just rented a house in Ramat Lotan, an upper-middle-class suburb of Tel Aviv, a house with a carport and a lawn. He lives with his mother, mother-in-law, his daughter, and the ghost of his wife.
"The days are all alike. He goes shopping, plays checkers, does repairs around the house. He fertilizers and mows the lawn, trims the hedge, buys a great variety of potted plants, and tries to get the newspaper deliverer to put the morning paper in the mailbox instead of throwing it on the driveway. He sleeps with his next-door neighbor. He watches television until snowflakes fill the screen. He drives to the sea and stares at the gray-green water. He is troubled by images past and present: a limbless beggar in a wheelchair, a pattern on the wallpaper of a hotel room, a figurine of a cat in mid-leap. There are nagging questions, uncertainties, the many women he has known but not known. The feeling that he has forgotten something, or that he is asleep and must wake up. Life itself seems to have become a secret code he cannot decipher."
退休特務，這沒什麼。女人，沒什麼。人生像無法解讀的密碼，也沒什麼。但密碼卻在一個人一天復一天的動線裏，這很叫我無端傷心。細細追認一個人一天所做的事，原來可以一發不可收拾。你看《尤利西斯》。
