By A. B. Yehoshua
Halban, £12.99
Noga is a harpist with an orchestra in Holland. After her father dies in his sleep in the family's rented apartment in Jerusalem, her brother persuades her to return to Israel for three months. Noga is to stay in the apartment to prevent it from being repossessed by its owners while her mother decides whether she wants to retire into an "assisted living" home nearer to her son in Tel Aviv.
Noga's stay in Jerusalem has an immediate cost: she loses a solo performance in Holland, which she has dearly wanted. Benefit is slower in manifesting itself. She is annoyed by the continual break-in of two Orthodox boy neighbours who have got into the habit of watching her mother's TV. She grows fed up with the roles as a film extra which her brother arranges to occupy her time and provide her with pin-money. And she resists an effort by her ex-husband to rekindle affection from her.
A week away from return to Europe, Noga's attitude seems to soften. "How will I slake the old desire that arose in Jerusalem," she asks herself. (This may sound more natural in Yehoshua's original Hebrew.) Noga tempts herself with the idea that she might resurrect something with her ex after all; but now, having been repulsed, he is fed up with her. She looks for comfort to her mother, who simply chides her for having chosen art instead of giving her ex the child he wanted.
Noga returns to Holland conflicted about her future. Her orchestra welcomes her back and embarks on a tour to Japan, where she is to be lead-player in Debussy's La Mer. She is infused with awareness that, in French, the work's title is a homonym for "mother".
Noga's story develops as one of decent, middle-class folk trying to be thoughtful to each other as they work through crises of childlessness, displacement, mild alienation and death. There are no devils, no bombs, no unnecessary blood. The Israel presented is domestic, bourgeois, at peace - too rarely the way an outer world sees it. This makes us expect a return there for Noga, but it does not happen, at least not in the inconclusive slice of her life that we are shown here. Will she end simply as one of life's "extras"?
The ordinariness of his tale is as illusory as it is pervasive. His gift is to present life just as it is lived, without showing off, without forcing conclusions, without literary self-consciousness. To be human, to wrestle with quotidian difficulties, to radiate warmth: it is hard to imagine that this should not be enough.
A. B. Yehoshua featured this week at Jewish Book Week 2016. Stoddard Martin is a writer and critic