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Play Music

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In this novel, a Jewish couple makes its way from Vienna to the silent movie theaters and opera houses of New York City and Rochester, New York.

Hugo Huber, the popular conductor of a silent movie house in New York City, is blessed with a wonderful family. The narrative shifts to his back story: Before he died, Hugo’s grandfather, cantor at a temple in Vienna, had financed his orphaned grandson’s violin training. With the continuing help of an aunt and uncle, Hugo eventually attended the Vienna Conservatory, where he met Liesl, daughter of the principal violinist of the Vienna Philharmonic. Soon after their marriage, they immigrated to America. Debonair Hugo first served as maestro of a New York City hotel orchestra, then conductor at the movie house. Liesl got involved in costume design at the Metropolitan Opera, encountering Enrico Caruso and others. Then, one of their two children fell ill, fueling the family’s desire for a more tranquil life. Hugo took a job as conductor for the movie house within George Eastman’s cultural complex in Rochester, New York. Unfortunately, other Eastman musicians were malcontents, and there was rampant anti-Semitism, causing the Hubers to further downplay their Jewish heritage. The novel concludes with the Klu Klux Klan planning a demonstration at the Hubers’ home, although the family survives this experience as well as the advent of talkies. In her afterword, White acknowledges that the Hubers are based on the parents of her North Carolina piano teacher, whose piano lessons provided “my first tantalizing taste of Europe.” She effectively mines the riches to be found in this couple’s story, with her novel offering colorful glimpses into the worlds of classical music and opera, Prohibition-era America, and the timing and scoring of music for silent films. Overall, the narrative is engaging, although it occasionally bogs down with nonchronological asides and ends rather abruptly. At its best, however, White’s novel is reminiscent of Ragtime in its fictional depiction of an emerging cultural change.


An entertaining, ambitious historical saga infused with a love of music and inspired by fascinating real-life figures.

Pub Date: May 2, 2014

ISBN: 978-1496101150

Page Count: 294

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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