Amazon The Balancing Game Category:  Literary Fiction Publisher: SBPRA ISBN-10:  162212846X Type: Fiction Pages: 258 Copyright: 2013 ISBN-13: 9781622128464 The daughter of refugees from Hitler's Germany growing up in a run-down part of London; a young woman expecting her first child trapped in Jerusalem in the period before and during the Six Day War. The world as seen through the eyes of a child whose family is out of synch with the world in which they find themselves; a young woman unable to leave the place where war is an inevitable result of the political situation. Excerpt “Ah, here comes our last little Mohican,” Daddy said as Naomi crept into his bed. Sarah was already ensconced next to Mummy, and Leah was on her other side. Daddy’s bed was warm and cosy, and he made Naomi turn round and lie as still as a mouse, so that he could snatch a few more minutes of sleep. Besides, he said, she was smelly. “You smell from your mouth like a cow from its bottom,” he whispered in her ear, making her squirm and laugh in embarrassment. She tried to keep her mouth closed and breathe away from him, but he made a disgusted face, which only made her giggle more. She hoped he wouldn’t start telling her the awful story about the man with no nose or start singing “Give me five minutes more, only five minutes more, in your arms,” like he sometimes did. On Friday nights, when Mummy brought supper to the table—and it was almost always chicken—Daddy liked to start singing, “Chickery-chick, cha-la, cha-la,” and they all joined in, and Mummy would laugh as she dished the food up onto their plates. Sometimes Naomi and her sisters laughed so much that the tears would roll down their cheeks. One Friday night Sarah had laughed so much that she had vomited onto her plate, and Mummy had been very cross. Daddy had put on a serious face, but then he had waggled his ears while Mummy was trying to clear up the mess, so that Sarah had hardly been able to stifle her giggles again. But it was no good. However hard she tried, Naomi simply could not and would not lie still in Daddy’s bed, and what was worse, tantalising muffled giggles were emanating from the adjacent bed. Sarah and Leah had started laughing, and most disloyally Mummy was joining in, making Naomi feel left out, bored and angry. She shifted about, sniffing the strange, masculine smell of her father’s body. “Alright, I suppose there’s nothing for it, we’ll have to get up and go to Shool,” he said after a while. “Run along and get dressed. We mustn’t be late.”

"Fascinating novel"

This fascinating novel explores the world through the eyes of a child and glows with warmth; parents and siblings are portrayed with much love, despite some moments of pain, exasperation, abandonment, and neglect. There is also inner anger at not being fully accepted by the outside world, not being given support and encouragement by teachers, a sense of always being a second class citizen. Yet the relations between Naomi and her younger sisters, as well as between the children and their parents, are described with affection and humor.