I am not a musician. When I was in elementary school, I played the viola for a while. I was laughingly banished to the back room of the house to practice so I can't possibly have been any good. That my music teacher called my mother when I quit to tell her that I needed to keep at it because I had perfect pitch was, I suspect, more the desperation of a music teacher long deafened by children drawing screechy bows across out of tune strings than any truth about my potential musical talent. I do, however, visibly wince when I hear someone belt out a flat note or have their instrument out of tune so maybe I have squandered untapped natural ability. (Really not likely.) In any case, I do enjoy reading about music, the making of music, and the completely foreign (to me) world of musicians so I was intrigued by Daphne Kalotay's newest novel, Sight Reading, set in the rarified world of classical music.
Composed mainly of a small chamber group of characters, lauded conductor and composer Nicholas Elko, his beautiful and accomodating wife Hazel, and the young second chair violin at the conservatory, Remy, the novel explores the quiet dramas of their changing personal lives from young adulthood to late middle age in an exquisite, extended symphony of lives. Opening with Hazel catching sight of Remy after many years, the novel skips back into the past to the beginning of the story, when Nicholas and Hazel were in the early years of their marriage, traveling around the world for Nicholas' promising career as a conductor and doting on preschool-aged daughter Jessie and Remy was simply a student in Nicholas' new student orchestra in Boston. But life keeps on moving, relationships change, marriages fail, and new formations appear as the novel progresses and each of the characters must adjust to the big and the mundane little things of life. At heart, this is a domestic novel wreathed in music and the musical world but not necessarily about music itself.
Throughout the narrative, Nicholas struggles with writing a symphony based in his Scottish childhood; it's to be his magnum opus. In the same way he seeks to capture the events, sights, and sounds from his past, the novel serves as the symphonic rendering of his, Hazel's, and Remy's lives, movement after movement after movement. And each stage of the novel takes a different tone. There is the desperation of Nicholas and Remy's affair and his falling in love with her against his will forcing him to end his marriage. There's the loneliness and fear of being forever alone, of continuing to hurt and feel unwanted, undesirable for so many years, that pervades Hazel's very being, even to the point of manifesting itself on her skin. There's the stagnation and writer's block that drives Nicholas into a wholly different world than the one he inhabits and there's the feeling of neglect and of being taken for granted, of not being included that Remy must fight even in this marriage she won so many years ago.
Deep and yet still common, everyday emotion underlies the whole of the narrative, this tale of divorce and remarriage, of parenting, of shared lives, of music and devotion. It is a subtle rendering and beautifully written. Kalotay has portrayed the world of professional musicians well and she manages to immerse even the unmusical into sound just through words on the page. Just as Remy strengthens her playing through the challenge of sight reading, playing a piece through without having seen or prepared it beforehand, so too must the characters take the challenge of sight reading their way through their lives. And when they each give themselves over to the unpredictability of this, they are in fact strengthened too.
Remy is perhaps the most fully rounded of the characters, the one whose inner life is most interesting. Hazel is almost too good, too blandly effacing, even when she is hurt. Her reaction to Nicholas' cheating and the fact that any ugliness or recriminations from the divorce either don't happen or are hidden in the undocumented, intervening years not in the book, make her seem as conciliatory and placid as Remy assumes she is. Nicholas' character is careless with other peoples' feelings but he comes off as selfish in a rather good natured and unthinking, absent-minded way rather than a considered and deliberate way, not that this fully absolves him. The notes of each characters' life mingles with the others, sometimes breaking out for a soaring solo and other times sublimating to the whole to create a complex, well-written piece about the very ordinariness of love and relationship. I wish I'd had the foresight to listen to some wonderful music as I was reading along so I could have been completely immersed in the world these characters inhabit.
For more information about Daphne Kalotay and the book check out her website or find her on Facebook. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.
Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.
This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.
The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel. The book is being released by Grand Central Publishing on June 11, 2013.
Amazon says this about the book: As America's Mercury Seven astronauts were launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focused on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.
Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was proclaimed JFK's favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived on base with a secret. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, meeting regularly to provide support and friendship. Many became next-door neighbors and helped to raise each other's children by day, while going to glam parties at night.
As their celebrity rose-and as divorce and tragic death began to touch their lives-they continued to rally together, and the wives have now been friends for more than fifty years. THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB tells the real story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history.
I have been beyond swamped lately. Not reading much and definitely not reviewing much at all. Here's hoping life starts to slow down soon because I am about to fall off this hamster wheel I'm on. Either that or perish from exhaustion! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.
Books I completed this past week are:
A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon
Schroder by Amity Gaige
Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:
Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
Sight Reading by Daphne Kalotay
Reviews posted this week:
The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro
A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon
Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
The One-Way Bridge by Cathie Pelletier
Float by JoeAnn Hart
Nowhere Is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson
Replacement Child by Judy Mandel
A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home by Sue Halpern
Schroder by Amity Gaige
So it's the time of year when I read a lot and get completely behind in writing my reviews again. School is wrapping up, sports are wrapping up for the season but tryouts for next season are coming like a freight train, everything conspires to keep me out of my house and in my car. But it's a good time of year, even if I do get drastically behind. I've spent the past two days (and am about to leave shortly for another day) back stage at my daughter's end of year dance recital. I'm working in the room with the 7-12 year olds and the cutest moment for me so far was when three little girls watching the video feed from the stage squealed and pointed out my daughter: "There's Miss R." I asked them if she was one of their teachers (she's actually just an assistant but little people don't make that differentiation). They said yes and I got to tell them that R. is my little girl. I think I went way up in their estimation when I told them that. :-) Because I will be backstage again today, I am sadly missing W.'s end of year tennis banquet. I hate that everything is happening on the same day! In the past few weeks, the tennis season wrapped up for W. and the soccer season ended for T. My tennis team made the playoffs but we lost our match on Friday so it looks like States is out for us although we do have a final match on this coming Friday. So it's been busy, busy, run, run, run around here. But soon I will be able to sit by the pool and sink into my books without interruption, just as soon as I get T. through soccer tryouts next week and his 5th grade celebration ceremony in a few weeks. Oh, and when I'm not driving R. to her daily dance rehearsals for the competitive team's Nationals. Hmmmm. Looks like I'm going to get even further behind than already planned. Ah well. It's all good.
This past week, with five days of tennis matches in a row, I didn't get a whole lot of reading in myself but my book travels did take me into a county nursing home with a therapy dog and into the motivations of a father in the throes of a divorce and contentious custody dispute who abducted his daughter. I'm currently immersed in the world of professional musicians and the drama of their personal lives. Where have books taken you this week?
Sometimes it is the small, unconsidered moments that change lives forever. What might be small for one though, seems momentous for another. And it's these small inequities which often point to larger ones amongst those between whom they occur. This is certainly the case between Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley, Harvard seniors when they become friends who hail from entirely different worlds and vastly different perspectives in Joanna Hershon's newest novel, A Dual Inheritance.
Ed is the son of a cantankerous pipe-fitting Jewish immigrant, raised in a neighborhood well along the way towards its slide into neglect and crime. He is brash and confident, sometimes abrasive, and determined to make money, lots of it. He's a not altogether successful skirt-chaser too, the sort of man who pursues almost any girl but exudes a whiff of smarmy desperation in his pursuit. So it is not much of a surprise that he connects with Hugh over a girl one night outside the library. Hugh Shipley is a golden boy, handsome son of a wealthy and venerable Boston Brahmin family. He is disaffected in the way that only the very rich can afford to be but he has a kind of casual magnetism about him that makes him irresistible to Ed. And improbably that night, with a little effort by Ed, they become friends. That year, as Hugh reconnects with his old love Helen, also from Hugh's social set, Ed is not so much a third wheel as the indispensible third person and through these two friends and their connections, he gets his first in into the world of high finance. That he also falls for Helen seems inconsequential until Hugh's indirection about his future causes him to take off for Africa to become a photographer or a movie producer or something he knows not what and leave his fiance behind, at which point, Ed and Hugh's friendship is doomed although only Ed understands the true reason why.
Years later, when only the memory of their friendship still exists, and each man has chosen his life's path, for Ed the accumulation of money and for Hugh humanitarian work in Africa and the Caribbean, their paths will cross again thanks to the friendship forged between their teenaged daughters at boarding school. Rebecca Cantowitz, Ed's daughter, splits her time between her divorced mother and father, enabling her to vacation with Vivi Shipley and her parents Hugh and Helen. Rebecca is half in love with Vivi and fully enamoured of Hugh. And unlike their fathers' friendship, the daughters will remain close and a part of each others' lives and family even as they grow to adulthood. Through Rebecca's eyes and enduring emotions, Hugh's and Ed's lives, missteps and all are recorded.
This is very much a slow, character driven novel examining the role of nature and nurture, the eponymous dual inheritance theory of the title, on the creation of these men and their daughters. It weaves nuances of social class, racism, the weight of expectation, desire, and greed throughout the entire narrative. But as much as these larger concerns swirl around, it is the decades of personal dramas which keep the plot moving, especially the frustrated love and/or desire of the Cantowitzes, pere and fille, Ed for Helen and Rebecca for Hugh. Hershon writes beautifully and yet I never felt engaged by any of the characters here, making it hard to sink into the novel's carefully, particularly rendered world. The friendship between Hugh and Ed was a bit baffling to me, at least on Hugh's part, and not drawn as completely and vividly as might have been to explain the magnitude of their rupture, or drift apart, depending on which character is telling the tale. None of the characters seem to have followed the paths they appeared to be on and there is enough of a time gap in the narrative that the reader is forced to take these fundamental changes to their characters on faith rather than seeing and following a steady development. This is a complex, layered novel, well written and thoughtful and yet I remained mostly untouched and rather remote from it as I read it.
For more information about Joanna Hershon and the book check out her website, find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.
Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.
When I was small, my grandmother had a collection of tiny, decorative perfume bottles on her dresser that fascinated me. The scents inside them weren't necessarily to my taste, but the exotic looking bottles with their fancy stoppers and their gold leafing appealed to my usually hidden girly side. They seemed so grown up, the very definition of a lady and I loved to touch them, hold them, and imagine stories about them. On a seemingly unrelated note, when I was pregnant, my sense of smell was heightened beyond all belief. I could open the refrigerator and know which of its contents were going off in the next day or two. I could smell and identify the faintest hints of things underneath showier scents. This was a blessing and a curse both. Combine my memories of these two sensory experiences, the touch of the perfume bottles and the heightened smell of intricate odors, and it comes as no surprise that I was attracted to Kathleen Tessaro's latest novel, The Perfume Collector.
Two intricately interwoven tales, the novel is the story, set in the 1950s, of Grace Monroe, a bright woman who is struggling with who she is, who she wants to be, and the uncomfortable persona of socialite wife her husband expects her to be to help him advance his career and, at the same time, it is also the story of Eva d'Orsey, a young French girl starting with her job as a chambermaid at a chic, glamourous, and discreet hotel for the daring and dallying jet set in New York City in 1927 and ranging through the rest of her fascinating and unusual life. When Grace is facing a crisis point in her marriage, having uncovered evidence of her husband's infidelity, she receives a commmunication from a lawyer's office in Paris, informing her that Eva d'Orsey has passed away and that she, Grace, is the sole beneficiary. Taking the opportunity to escape London, Grace heads to France, certain that there has been a mistake; after all, she has no idea who Eva d'Orsey is. Assured that she is indeed Eva's heir, she is unwilling to accept such a generous bequest from a perfect stranger and so she enlists the French lawyer, Edouard Tissot, to help her uncover who Eva was and how she was connected to Grace. As she and Edouard start to discover the smallest pieces of information about the late Mlle. d'Orsey, the plot shifts to Eva's tale and her trajectory from chambermaid to muse for one of the most sought after and talented perfumers of the time, Monsieur Valmont, a Jew.
Tessaro skillfully weaves the two stories together, moving from one to the other and back again, beautifully balancing Grace's personal unhappiness and her quest to understand what her inheritance means for her future with Eva's eventful story and the revelation of the connection between Grace and Eva. The immersion in the world of scents is fascinating and having Grace learn about this rarified profession allows the reader to learn about it as well without being overwhelmed by reams of authorial research. Both past time periods and the public restraints placed on women are artfully rendered and there is an air of elegance to the story as a whole. How Grace and Eva are connected is presented as a mystery but it's really only a mystery to Grace as the astute reader has no doubts about it right from the start of the novel but this predictability is only a small misstep in a sophisticated and over all enticing novel. A wonderful tale for historical fiction fans, this is also an appealing look at women, unusual certainly, but firmly of their times, the avenues open to them, and the ways in which they choose to order their lives, celebrate their own intelligence, and ultimately create themselves.
It is one to savour slowly even as it becomes increasingly difficult to put down.
For more information about Kathleen Tessaro and the book check out her website or find her on Facebook. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.
Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.
I am not a musician. When I was in elementary school, I played the viola for a while. I was laughingly banished to the back room of the house to practice so I can't possibly have been any good. That my music teacher called my mother when I quit to tell her that I needed to keep at it because I had perfect pitch was, I suspect, more the desperation of a music teacher long deafened by children drawing screechy bows across out of tune strings than any truth about my potential musical talent. I do, however, visibly wince when I hear someone belt out a flat note or have their instrument out of tune so maybe I have squandered untapped natural ability. (Really not likely.) In any case, I do enjoy reading about music, the making of music, and the completely foreign (to me) world of musicians so I was intrigued by Daphne Kalotay's newest novel, Sight Reading, set in the rarified world of classical music.
For more information about Daphne Kalotay and the book check out her website or find her on Facebook. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.
Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.
