After her fatherâs death, a musician must go home to Israel to confront the relationships she left behind in this novel by the author of The Retrospective
Noga, forty-two and divorced, is a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands. Upon the sudden death of her father, she is summoned home to Jerusalem by her brother to help make decisions in urgent family and personal matters. Returning also means facing a former husband who left her when she refused him children, but whose passion for her remains even though he is remarried and the father of two. For her imposed three-month residence in Israel, her brother finds her work as an extra in movies, television, and opera. These new identities undermine the firm boundaries of behavior heretofore protected by the music she plays, and Noga, always an extra in someone elseâs story, takes charge of the plot. The Extra is Yehoshua at his liveliest storytelling bestâa bravura performance.
âEngagingâĻYehoshua is a master in his visual sketches of scenes.ââThe New York Times Book Review
â[A] finely etched new novelâĻA marvel of a book.ââHaaretzÂ
âFour and a half decades after his first bookâs publication, his twentieth shows Yehoshuaâs writing chops are undiminished and his content fearlessly topical.ââNew York Journal of Books
âRich in reflection and personal truthâĻMasterful.ââKirkus Reviews, starred review
âAward-winning Israeli novelist Yehoshua gives moral force, even grandeur, to the inevitable push-pull of one familyâs life.ââLibrary Journal, starred review