The thing with Veronica is that Omri, the book's protagonist, is not the only one who is in love with her: somewhere between p. 83 and p. 112, similar feelings are likely to arise in readers as well.
Veronica, as Omri remembers her from the distance of time and through the fog that envelops first love, is intelligent, opinionated, tumultuous and conducts herself in the world with confidence, as far as possible for a sixteen-year-old girl.
The heart follows her, and so, in the first part of the book, readers may try to crack, alongside the central mystery in the work, another mystery: what is in it, in Omri, that Veronica's soul was bound in his own.
Already in the first paragraph we were given a centralized information about him: age, place of residence, hobbies, habits. His occupation and marital status are soon revealed as well. But the real Omri, for his complexity and inner world - what goes beyond a collection of data that is mostly demographic, is slowly being revealed, as a way of doing things that is worth waiting for. Then, one manages to see, thanks to the author's restraint, the charm of the boy he was and the man he is today: very different from the masculinity he represents in the first part of the book, brought from the mouth of an all-knowing narrator. There, Omri is described as a purposeful and critical person, also towards himself, who prides himself on his achievements and tends to suspect people's motives. All of these are true, but as one progresses through the pages of the book, the meaning of these aspects becomes clearer, and more, others are revealed.
As the son of an institution man, Omri moved from place to place, getting to know Veronica when they were studying together at a school in Germany. She also migrates, following the work of her journalistic father, a job that later robs her of Omri and leaves him heartbroken. They cling to each other, and she opens up to him a passionate, emotional, cultural and intellectual world, playing a significant role in his initiation process. Although the book's protagonist is Omri, and a central part of it is written in the first person, from his point of view, the book's cover bears Veronica's name and facial features, and to a large extent she shares this literary status with him.
When she sends him a letter in which she asks, after many years of disconnection, to meet her at the cafe in Frankfurt on the day and time she set, Omri runs through his head possible scenarios of what has happened in Veronica's life since they broke up and the reason for the meeting. In those "what would have happened if" games there is something cruel: if the story weaves in his mind's eye is better than reality, he is rightly disappointed. And if he is worse than reality, then he will feel sorrow. Interestingly, Veronica's letter does not evoke a rescue fantasy in him. Omri's motivation to meet her is different: curiosity, closing a circle and perhaps reopening it, longing to want it again, expecting an apology for breaking up with him.
Memory employs Omri. As he tells the story, he corrects his words as he recalls the details more clearly. "What of all the memories, small and large, is a fact, an accurate photograph of the moment itself, what a false imagination, a lie that impersonates the truth, and what resonates the truth, raises something of its form but is not the exact truth," he says. He strives to remember exactly every detail about the love of his youth not only because in this way he clings to something certain when his life is full of changes, but also because when Omri enlivens the girl Veronica in his thoughts, he also enlivens the boy Omri.
"When we fell in love we were both in our teens, and today we are already at an age where a person recognizes the misses he has missed, the things he will not achieve," he says.
Shavit conveys, with great sensitivity, the feeling of missing out in a way that undresses the facts from the nostalgia that envelops them and sees things as they are.
Alongside this feeling, it offers a different way of seeing the past: people we have met touch our lives, and we our lives, following a deep acquaintance over the years or a casual acquaintance of a moment.
Sometimes it is pinching to look at the past, to realize how much we have changed and moved away, we have severed ties, but the one whose life has crossed ours for the world will never be a part of us, and we are a part of it.
In those moments when the feeling of missing out comes from a letter placed in the mailbox or from a memory that came up in us, one can find comfort in that.
"Veronica" / Uriah Shavit, Pardes Publishing. 266 p.
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