A COLLECTION OF BREVITIES

A retired pianist and his distant mother reflect on their complicated relationships to music and each other in Summers’ literary novel.

Joey was one of classical music’s most famous pianists, but he hasn’t performed publicly in 10 years. Since leaving the stage, he has lived in near anonymity in Australia with his son, Little Ben, whom he fathered with the help of Claire, the twin sister of his former lover and partner, Ben. Joey’s success in music is largely due to the sacrifices made by his mother, Alta, an accomplished singer in her own right. The widowed Alta lives in Texas, convinced that she’s squandered her talents on behalf of her son’s, only for him to throw everything away by retiring before the age of 50. The lives of the son and his mother—long separate and private—have recently been disrupted by a publisher working on a biography of the great pianist. “I just don’t think what I actually know will be of interest to anyone,” Joey reflects dismissively. “What they all will want is an intemperate account of invented controversies. Gratitude and precision have no drama, either in life or at the piano.” Even so, both Joey and Alta begin to write down their memories, with the intention of turning them over as fodder for the anonymous biographer. As Alta movingly reflects on her years training Joey, as well as her secret lovers and her lost sense of purpose, Joey incisively examines his complicated relationships with his family of origin and chosen family, as well as with the music whose presence and absence have defined his life. The story is told in brief alternating chapters, many only a page or two in length. Summers skillfully limns the inner lives of both narrators, particularly that of Alta. “It wasn’t all that nonsense about ‘making love’ to a piano that I occasionally read in some of those ridiculous articles or reviews,” she writes of Joey, “but he did connect with something elemental in the playing of music.” Chapter by chapter, a complicated and haunting duet emerges.

A deeply felt novel about the way pain feeds art—and vice versa.