An emotional story set to the music of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin.
A talented teenage musician explores romance, faith, and music in Philbrick’s (Everbloom, 2017, etc.) coming-of-age novel.
Clive Serkin is a 17-year-old piano prodigy and the son of Claude Serkin, the conductor of the Chicago Philharmonic. He’s bored with his “old, gray-haired, Bach obsessed piano teacher,” Saul Koussevitsky, so he begins taking lessons in secret with middle-aged, world-renowned pianist Clare Cardiff. She recently put her fast-paced, concert-driven life on hold and moved to Chicago after her abusive husband, Nero Cardiff, announced that he wanted them to take a break. As Clive’s romantic feelings for Clare grow, she begins to see him as the son she never had. His already excellent musicianship improves enough to gain him admittance to the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Russia. All the while, Clare grapples with memory lapses, and she’s later diagnosed with early-onset dementia. The diagnosis forces Clare to move back in with Nero, and Clive is left to perform in Moscow without his beloved teacher. Although the story begins with a familiar storyline—a talented child pushed too far by a parent’s dream—Philbrick, in clear prose, builds a story that breaks that mold. It does so with rich music history (including mentions of Clara and Robert Schumann’s relationship), nuanced characters (Nero uses his pottery skills to sculpt a child that he and Clare never had), religious themes, and a website that readers may visit to listen to specific pieces mentioned in the book. Clive and Clare’s “Love born on a bench” is delicately constructed; the two don’t do anything more than hold hands, but their intimacy is strong: “Clive drew close to her with romanticized desire. Her hand fit seamlessly in his as the black piano keys agree with the white ones.” Some scenes discussing religion feel preachy, but most add depth to the story and characters. In one scene, for example, Clare’s sister, Bethany, tells her, “All our lives have transcendent value”—and to Clare, that value is her music.
An emotional story set to the music of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin.Pub Date: May 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938467-99-8
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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