Every House Needs a Balcony Review & Giveaway

An international bestseller and publishing phenomenon, Every House Needs a Balcony — dubbed the “Israeli Kite Runner” by The Bookseller—is the story of one family, one home, and the surprising arc of one woman’s life, from the poverty of her youth, to the glowing love and painful losses of her adult years. If you enjoy the novels of Dalia Sofer (The Septembers of Shiraz), Amos Oz (My Michael, A Tale of Love and Darkness), and A.B. Yehoshua (Mr Mani), you’ll find much to love in Rina Frank’s beautiful and bittersweet Every House Needs a Balcony.

Braiding together past and present, Every House Needs a Balcony tells the story of a young Jewish girl — a child of Romanian immigrants — who lives with her family in the poverty-stricken heart of 1950s Haifa, Israel. Eight-year-old Rina, her older sister, and their parents inhabit a cramped apartment with a narrow balcony that becomes an intimate shared stage on which the joys and dramas of the building’s daily life are played out. It is also a vantage point from which Rina witnesses the emergence of a strange new country, born from the ashes of World War II. Later, after years of living abroad with her wealthy Spanish husband in Barcelona, Rina, longing for the simple life she has missed, returns to the Haifa of her boisterous youth, a move that soothes her soul but ultimately endangers her marriage.

Beautifully told, rich with questions of identity, love, and survival, Every House Needs a Balcony is an unforgettable social and historical portrait of a neighborhood and a nation. Steeped in the colors and smells, laughter and tears, of Rina Frank’s own childhood memories, it is a heartbreaking tale about the deepest meanings of home.

From Every House Needs a Balcony, “All the buildings had balconies, one balcony facing the other, with no difference between the outside and the inside.  The stone walls had been designed as a buffer only against the cold or the heat, not between the people and the neighborhood and the families who lived there.  There were no curtains in the windows, and everyone was able to see everyone else, as if on a conveyor belt.  Your entire life was laid out there on the balcony, illustrated in the piles of bedclothes hung out daily on the banister for airing.  All the neighbors knew how often, if at all, every family changed its sheets.  And if it wasn’t enough that everything was visible to all eyes, there was also the laundry, pegged out to dry on ropes stretched along the length of the balcony, revealing the patched clothes and the underwear and nightgowns worn and faded from too much washing.  It was as if all your belongings were displayed there each day for public auction….

Every word shouted in ever apartment could be heard all over the street, especially by anyone sitting on the balcony.  Our street was very vociferous; it was as if the neighbors all knew that Mother was hard of hearing and did their best not to make her feel left out.  Conversations from one balcony to another were a matter of routine.  Sitting on the balcony was practically the same as sitting in an armchair and watching television.  For us, the balcony was our television, and what we saw was real life, played out with authentic actors in real time.”

The author of three novels, Rina Frank was born in Wadi Salib, the poorest neighborhood in Haifa. She worked as a technical architect, marketing director, and television producer with Israel’s Channel 2 before founding her own production company, Matan TV Production.  Every House Needs a Balcony is her first novel.  She lives in Tel Aviv.

Details of the book: Every House Needs a Balcony
Author: Rina Frank
Translator: Ora Cummings
ISBN: 9780061714238
ISBN-10: 0061714232
Format: Hardcover
Publisher Date: 6.8.2010
Publisher: HarperCollins
Number of Pages: 336
Retail Price: $24.99
Language: English
Ages: 18 and Up
Trimsize: 5 5/8 x 8 1/4

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Click HERE to read the first three chapters of the book.

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