THE BELLS

A young man endures hardship, abuse and mutilation on the path to musical glory in 18th- century Vienna.

When we first meet Moses, the hero and narrator of Harvell’s debut, he’s growing up in degraded circumstances in the Swiss Alps. His mother is a deaf-mute who is taken advantage of by a local priest, banishing both mother and child to the church belfry in the name of secrecy. She takes her revenge by aggressively pounding the church’s massive bells loudly enough to blast the eardrums of all who approach—except Moses, who has a preternatural musical talent. Cast out by the priest, Moses is soon discovered by two monks, Nicolai and Remus, who exchange Abbott and Costello–style banter as they take the boy under their wing. Moses’ singing ability keeps him from being sent to an orphanage, but the abbey is full of its own humiliations: He’s ostracized by his fellow choirboys, the sons of wealthy men who are financing a massive church construction; Nicolai and Remus are expelled under accusations of homosexuality; and as Moses nears puberty he’s castrated in the hopes of making him a musico. The sole bright spot in his life is Amalia, a young woman seduced by his singing and eager to escape the clutches of her controlling aunt. Harvell’s storytelling is fast-paced and deliberately melodramatic, as the plot threads converge on Vienna, where the debut of Gluck’s Orfeo serves as the novel’s climax. Like Orfeo, the plot of this novel is built on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, though Harvell gives his story a few contemporary twists. Nicolai and Remus provide an opportunity to comment on the struggles of homosexuals at the time, both inside and outside the church; Amalia reveals a proto-feminist eagerness to stop living under the thumb of parents or a husband; and in rounding out this motley crew, Moses himself undercuts the era’s conservative notions of faith and masculinity. Harvell doesn’t press those points, but they do add gravitas to his likable historical page-turner.

An entertaining coming-of-age tale that earns its operatic tone.