PLAYING WITH PASSION

Name: PLAYING WITH PASSION
Author: Katrina Reinhardt
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4314-7

by Katrina Reinhardt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2018

Equal parts musical treatise and romantic journey, this story will find a ready audience in classical music lovers but may...

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In 1970s Massachusetts, a young musician explores her sexuality and relationship to the arts in Reinhardt’s debut novel.

Yvette Berg, a 23-year-old Parisian music composition student, arrives in the United States in 1977, seeking a position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her mission is to teach students about the connections between classical music and other traditional forms of art. She soon stumbles into a series of difficult-to-define relationships with various acquaintances, including Kolya Brodsky, the attractive Soviet cellist living in Yvette’s building; Abe Lipinsky, her brilliant but adulterous professor; and Sophie, a violinist at the Boston conservatory. However, Yvette can’t escape the memories of a past affair with her music professor in Paris, which resulted in her giving up a child for adoption. Reinhardt introduces some thoughtful ideas about the relationship between artist, artwork, and audience, especially when Yvette realizes the parallels between her situation and “Verklärte Nacht,” a Richard Demel poem that inspired one of her favorite musical pieces. The characters are impressively nuanced, with realistic motivations and an abundance of flaws. Nevertheless, the formality of the writing causes passionate scenes to seem, at times, too impersonal: “Yvette had never before had an experience like it. She cried out in sexual exclamation many times.” Readers with a strong interest in classical composition will enjoy the detailed analyses of composers, but others may become lost. Reinhardt also spends too much time on exposition and summary, and dwells too much on the minutiae of Yvette’s daily routine.

Equal parts musical treatise and romantic journey, this story will find a ready audience in classical music lovers but may prove less exciting for others.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4314-7

Page Count: 158

Publisher: iUniverse

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.