Known for Jerusalem Beach—an award-winning debut collection of often startling philosophic and speculative short stories — Iddo Gefen returns with his first novel. Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory is written in a more comic vein than his previous work, and the highly entertaining result is an exquisite blend of endearing portraits of a tightly knit family and their hardscrabble community, together with acerbic and sometimes affectionate satire of people driven to high-tech hysteria, phishing scams, faux-philanthropy, climate manipulation, romantic love, and ultimately humanity’s eternal penchant for delusion.
Set in the Israeli desert overlooking “the world’s largest erosion crater,” the novel’s rendering of a vast empty space offers slyly oblique commentary on the harebrained calculations and ambitions of its characters. The story begins with the arresting image of its titular character (an “inventor extraordinaire”) — who has been reported missing for three days — calmly sitting in her bathrobe in the midst of desert wilderness with an ice-cold martini in hand. A frightened Dutch hiker who has lost his way stumbles across her, uncertain whether Mrs. Sarai Lilienblum is just a mirage. What ensues is highly ingenious and hilarious storytelling. Mrs. Lilienblum’s adult children, Eli the idealist and Naomi the rationalist — both frazzled by their mother’s baffling disappearance and overnight transformation into an internet sensation — scramble to keep up with the chaos caused by her bizarre but potentially lucrative invention: a device that vacuums up desert sand to produce rainclouds.
The eccentric Lilienblums manage a modest desert lodge; for years, the town’s meager tourism has subsisted primarily on the mystery of a legendary Irishman whose disappearance into the surrounding desert attracts backpackers from around the world (adding intriguing layers of conspiracy and moral transgression to an already unusual plot). Despite Ben Gurion’s celebrated promise to help make their desert bloom, they’ve suffered decades of neglect by the state. Now, as word gets out about Mrs. Lilienblum’s miraculous invention, journalists and investors begin to descend on the village known as “The Cliff” (a clear stand-in for Mitzpe Ramon, the southern Negev development town), and its residents grow feverishly excited by the prospect of a booming economy.
At one point, Mrs. Lilienblum’s son Eli fondly recalls East European Jewish folklore from his childhood about the dwellers of Chelm, the imaginary town of childlike fools (ironically dubbed the “Wise Men of Chelm”) where the men scheme to capture the silvery light of the moon reflected in a rain barrel with a towel. “Eli wasn’t entirely sure he understood the story, but he remembered well what his mother had told him at the time — that everyone believes they have a moon hidden in some barrel, and that even if it’s not true, the towel must never be lifted, ‘because sometimes one’s belief that they are in possession of the moon is the only thing they have’.” That poignant sentiment nimbly captures the essence of the novel’s outlook, as both literal and figurative dreamers abound. And as one local explains, the residents’ hopes and aspirations are further complicated by the desert itself, a mystifying place where “the laws of physics work a little differently, and the things that happen here don’t happen anywhere else.”
The spirited whimsy of Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory will captivate many readers, while the fate of a fragile love affair will undoubtedly stir others. Distinguished by sparkling dialogue, an unerring grasp of the complex undercurrents of close families, and sheer madcap momentum, it’s a lark from start to finish. Readers who find themselves missing Meir Shalev’s inimitable gifts for blending tragicomic explorations of human psychology with an indelible sense of place will find much to enjoy in Gefen’s narrative. Daniella Zamir’s translation captures all the wry absurdity and human warmth of the original.
Ranen Omer-Sherman is the JHFE Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Louisville, author of several books and editor of Amos Oz: The Legacy of a Writer in Israel and Beyond.
