The Extra

From the internationally acclaimed author of A Woman in Jerusalem, a novel about a musician who returns home and finds the rhythm of her life interrupted and forever changed

Noga, 42, a Jerusalem divorcee, is a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands. Upon the sudden death of her father, she is summoned home by her brother to help make decisions in urgent family and personal matters--hanging on to a rent-controlled apartment even as they are placing a reluctant mother in an assisted facility; facing a former husband with whom she would have no children but who still loves her passionately though remarried with two children.

For her imposed three-month residence in Jerusalem, the brother finds her work--playing roles as an extra in movies, television, opera. These new identities undermine the firm boundaries of behavior heretofore protected by the music she plays and Noga, always an extra in someone else’s story, takes charge of the plot.

The Extra is Yehoshua at his liveliest storytelling best—a bravura performance.