A harpist for whom someone else pulls the strings (Books - The Extra by A. B. Yehoshua)

A. B. Yehoshua is one of just a few Israeli writers, along with Amos Oz and David Grossman, whose novels are regularly translated and make their way to the U.S. I especially enjoyed his Mr. Mani, a sweeping tale of six generations of a Sephardic family.  His latest The Extra trans. Stuart Schoffman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) concerns Noga, an Israeli-born harpist, living in Holland.  Following her father's death, her brother wishes their mother to leave her Jerusalem apartment and move to an assisted living facility near his home. His mother resists, so a compromise is reached - she will try out the facility for three months.  Through a quirk of the law, she risks losing her Jerusalem apartment if it is not occupied by a member of the family, so Noga is asked to take a leave from her job with a Dutch orchestra and stay in Jerusalem for that period.

The Consequences of Betrayal (Books - Exposure by Helen Dunmore)

Helen Dunmore's Exposure (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016) is a gently genre-defying novel - a deep and satisfying story of relationships posing as a cold war spy novel.  It  is as if someone were filming an espionage thriller and this is the story from the backstage perspective.  The actor makes his entrance into the office to be challenged on the missing pages from the dossier, but you, the reader, are watching him as he prepares off-set, smooth back his hair prior to his entrance, and when he enters to play the scene, instead of focusing on the written dialogue, you hear a voice-over of what he is thinking while playing the scene.

Since this is the obverse of an espionage novel, the plot as such is not the point, but... it is the 1960s. Lily's husband, Simon, who works a mid-level job for British Intelligence, is asked by his superior, Giles, to return a sensitive file when Giles unexpectedly lands in the hospital.  Lily unwittingly discovers it and buries it to protect her husband.  Simon is just unimportant enough in the power hierarchy, and the file just important enough, that he becomes a scapegoat when its disappearance must be covered up. He home is searched. He is carted off, awaiting a courtroom trial in a jail cell and Lily and her children gradually become ostracized.

Flat storytelling dulls new YA series (Book - Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel)

Sylvain Neuvel's Sleeping Giants (Del Rey, 2016) is the first volume of a planned YA fantasy series.  A young girl happens upon a giant hand at the bottom of a hole dug into the earth.  It is composed of an unidentifiable metal, is several thousand years old, and sits in a square shaft whose walls are painted with symbols. Fast forward 20 years and this girl has become a scientist who joins a team of quirky experts - military and scientific - who are charged to understand the origin and purpose of the hand. Has it been placed here for good or evil?  Who by, since humans were not known to be technologically advanced enough to build such an object 3,000 years ago?  Unfortunately, this potentially compelling story is told as a series of diary entries or interview transcripts, the result being chapters that explain what has already happened. The narrative is fast-moving, but dull because we are at a remove from the action of the story. It is full of pseudo-profundities about the power of ultimate destruction and international relations.  Even reading this during the Brexit vote while traveling in the UK did not conspire to ignite the kindling under these timely ideas.  Neuvel's attempt to create suspense by having the main interviewer of each of the characters stories be an invisible but powerful presence (think Charlie in Charlie's Angels) is his best idea, but falls flat due to a prose style that manages to feel too cute and show-offy.  Where Neuvel is most effective is in capturing the feeling of scientists at work on a problem.  The lab sequences ring true but aren't enough to drive me to read further in this series.

The Birth of a Narrative (Books - The Sky Over Lima by Juan Gómez Bárcena)

The debut novel of Spaniard Juan Gómez Bárcena - The Sky Over Lima (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) - is a mischievous, Escher-like paean to the power of the written word.  His protagonists are 20-year-old Carlos and José, the first the scion of an aristocratic family, the second of a nouveau-riche manufacturer.  Both are rich enough to rent a Parisian-like garret in their home city of Lima, and, although they live with their parents, go there to live out a fantasy of being great writers. They have a passionate crush on literature, playing a game in which every person they encounter is turned into a character in a great novel. Their law professor become's Tolsoy's Ivan Ilyich.  A woman of their acquaintance, Madam Bovary having lived into old age.  When they learn that Ramón Jiminéz, the Nobel-winning Spanish bard that they idolize, has published a volume not available in Peru, they struggle to write a letter that will convince him to send them a copy, unsatisfied with draft upon draft, until they realize:

They must embellish reality, because in the end that is what poets do, and they are poets, or at least they've dreamed of being poets on many late nights like this one.  And that is exactly what they are about to do now: write the most difficult poem of all, one that has no verses but can touch the heart of a true artist. 

It starts out as a joke, but then it turns out it's not a joke.  One of the two say, almost idly, It would be easier if we were a beautiful woman, then Don Juan Ramón would put his entire soul into answering us, that violet soul of his - and then suddenly he stops, the two young men look at each other a moment, and almost unintentionally the mischief has already been made.