“This is a forceful and weighty book . . . written in a quiet, personal voice, and with humor. It is a documentary book, but it is written like literature in the full sense of the word. It produces in the reader—at least it did in this reader—empathy and emotion, and it reads like a powerful, consciousness-changing novel.”
— David Grossman, author of To the End of the Land, Praise for the Hebrew edition
“At the heart of the book is a woman on her own, free, inquisitive, friendly, who drives children to the sea so that they can see it for the first time, and who meets families and friends and officials and speaks with them and observes them. A woman who is capable of ‘ridiculing fears and prejudices, of crossing barriers of walls and fences with her body, her spirit, and her mind, and of defying limitations that reside in the soul—limitations of submission and obedience, and especially of fear—and vanquishing them.’”
— Omri Herzog, Haaretz, Praise for the Hebrew edition
“If you want a book whose words are clear and simple and which says things that come out of a wise heart, this is a book for you. . . . Hammerman is not boring for one moment: her book is vibrant, personal, and relevant, and its intensity is tangible under the surface. Sometimes the descriptions become fine literature by virtue of the narrative ease, with the anger neutralized. It is not the storyteller who is shouting, it is the story that cries out without raising its voice.”
— Talma Admon, Maariv, Praise for the Hebrew edition
“I am torn while I read it. I weep. . . . The writing is so honest and so lovely. It is as if there is no other way to seduce the horror. But please, do read it.”
— Lea Aini, author of Bat ha-Makom, Praise for the Hebrew edition
“Intense, heartbreaking, and filled with memories of shared laughter and tears, A Small Door Set in Concrete is the work of a sensitive, courageous soul. Its stories of injustice and oppression might be overwhelming were it not for Hammerman’s example of facing it all with compassion and courage. Her text demands to know why nothing is being done and calls upon the world to effect change through the power of mass civil disobedience.”
— Foreword Reviews
Israeli journalist, translator, and editor Hammerman’s memoir of life along the Israel-Palestine border is a fascinating view into the region’s ongoing tensions in the early 2000s. She finds both the absurd and tragic in the bureaucratic structures that keep Palestinians and Israelis divided. [...] As this is written primarily in the third person, readers may at times forget that they're not reading farcical fiction, though the ways in which Hammerman conveys the humanity of each person ground her memoir in reality. A final section includes Hammerman’s first-person articles reported from the Gaza Strip. Readers will appreciate Hammerman’s literary depiction of life on the ground in the borderland."
— Booklist
"If [Hammerman] is working toward a long-term change, it is through the reader. Buried in Hammerman’s words is a quiet but insistent alarm clock. She proposes an awakening to the coffee shops and living rooms beyond the point where cars of casual passers-by turn back. She urges an opening of the consciousness that can only occur outside the physical and metaphysical contours of a state."
— Al Jadid
"Above all, Hammerman shows how the Occupation works to cast Palestinians as 'creatures of a different species,' rather than 'normal human beings.' Her remarkable book is a fierce corrective to this."
— Times Literary Supplement
"Although Hammerman does not deal with the origin of the question of Palestine, nor does she bring up the 1948 historical moment, the narrative is a must read for all readers who wish to learn about the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, a plight that has been taking place since 1967, under the very eyes of the international community and human rights agencies."
— Arab Studies Quarterly