Mozart's Wife

Rating:
Summary: I've Read it Twice and Will Read it Again!
Review: As a huge Mozart fan, I found this the very best Mozart novel I've ever read, especially since it's in the point of view of Constanze, his long-suffering wife. The prose is extremely beautiful. I can only compare it to who I consider the master of beautiful prose, LaVeryle Spencer. She has a way of conveying emotions that no other writer can. The prose is polished to a bright sheen. Flawless. The historical details are marvelous. You're really in Constanze's head, vividly. I only wish it were a movie!!

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous, Haunting Prose
Review: I was blown away by this novel because it truly is excellent. Waldron's prose is gorgeous all the way through, capturing the reader because of its reality and passion and lyrical quality in a way that enhances the scope of the story, based on history. To travel along throughout Constanze's life as she deals with the difficulty of being married to a genius like Mozart is a real treat. I've always felt history should be compelling and fascinating, and it can be. Waldron just proved it with this excellent book. It's easy to see why it won the Independent E-Book Awards when it was first an e-book.

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous, Haunting Prose
Review: I was blown away by this novel because it truly is excellent. Waldron's prose is gorgeous all the way through, capturing the reader because of its reality and passion and lyrical quality in a way that enhances the scope of the story, based on history. To travel along throughout Constanze's life as she deals with the difficulty of being married to a genius like Mozart is a real treat. I've always felt history should be compelling and fascinating, and it can be. Waldron just proved it with this excellent book. It's easy to see why it won the Independent E-Book Awards when it was first an e-book.

Rating:
Summary: Life and the Artist
Review: Mozart's Wife by Juliet Waldron is a richly textured and painstakingly researched trip into the eighteenth century. Waldron's prose is clean, infinitely readable. She develops her characters brilliantly and without sentimentality. The overriding sense is that of *the real*: Stanzi Mozart is voluptuous, spirited, and wretched by turns. What is life lived in the shadow of a genius? Exaltation, poverty, at times madness. Mozart's Wife lays before the reader the picture of a man overcome by the Muse, and the woman who struggles to live with him, keep their meager household, and rear their children. Mozart in essence, remains a puzzle: it has been posited that the heightened sensitivity of artistic genius may render life too painful to bear, and that this is why so many truly brilliant musicians, poets, or writers enter a cycle of inevitable self-destruction. They burn with a blinding light and extinguish themselves. Mozart's Wife takes up this theme in the relationship of Wolfgang and Stanzi; the opiate for Mozart's pain is the female form. Waldron doesn't lapse into romanticism, however. Her characters seize the reader from the outset because they are genuine-their hopes, fears, joy, and pain become our own. The author has the uncanny ability to place us in the conjugal bed, in the midst of a pain-riddled childbirth, a dying man's vision, or at the Opera with equal dexterity. Most telling, when Stanzi must face the reality of her feelings after many years by Mozart's side, we have been there with her; we've mourned and adored and torn our hair.

Rating:
Summary: Life and the Artist
Review: Mozart's Wife by Juliet Waldron is a richly textured and painstakingly researched trip into the eighteenth century. Waldron's prose is clean, infinitely readable. She develops her characters brilliantly and without sentimentality. The overriding sense is that of *the real*: Stanzi Mozart is voluptuous, spirited, and wretched by turns. What is life lived in the shadow of a genius? Exaltation, poverty, at times madness. Mozart's Wife lays before the reader the picture of a man overcome by the Muse, and the woman who struggles to live with him, keep their meager household, and rear their children. Mozart in essence, remains a puzzle: it has been posited that the heightened sensitivity of artistic genius may render life too painful to bear, and that this is why so many truly brilliant musicians, poets, or writers enter a cycle of inevitable self-destruction. They burn with a blinding light and extinguish themselves. Mozart's Wife takes up this theme in the relationship of Wolfgang and Stanzi; the opiate for Mozart's pain is the female form. Waldron doesn't lapse into romanticism, however. Her characters seize the reader from the outset because they are genuine-their hopes, fears, joy, and pain become our own. The author has the uncanny ability to place us in the conjugal bed, in the midst of a pain-riddled childbirth, a dying man's vision, or at the Opera with equal dexterity. Most telling, when Stanzi must face the reality of her feelings after many years by Mozart's side, we have been there with her; we've mourned and adored and torn our hair.

Rating:
Summary: Historical anti-romance
Review: The tortures of the Inquisition wouldn't induce me to confess to reading historical romances, so Mozart's Wife is perforce a historical love story. It's the first-person narrative of Konstanze Marie, nee Weber and in later life Nissen, who has been almost exclusively vilified or ignored through seven generations of her husband's biographers. They see a great genius dead at thirty-five, an unmarked grave and a widow minting cash from his manuscripts. Konstanze's story redresses the balance with an engaging and thoroughly engrossing picture of life as a woman in the late eighteenth century - the complexities of love and marriage, the practicalities of running a household, the horror of "dishonour" and the agony and danger of childbirth - and, in Konstanze's case, the additional complication of her brilliant, charming, vulgar, gentle, generous, philandering, feckless, irresistible and totally incorrigible husband. Though nearly immune to his musical gifts (her favourite of his operas, not unjustifiably in the circumstances, is the one that made the most money), Konstanze clearly contributes more to the survival of his work than the great man himself ever thought of doing. But although Konstanze touchingly recounts her life after Wolfgang's death, it's the Mozarts' life together that takes up most of the book, and it's the details of that life that compel the attention - the characterisation of Mozart's cold, stern and uppity family; the moving from place to place, buoyed up by an adoring Prague only to be dragged down by an indifferent Vienna; the endless, unwinnable battle to try and clear up the disaster area that is Mozart's finances; the exhausting and perilous ordeals of pregnancy, childbirth and what is nowadays blandly called "infant mortality". If, towards the end of the book, Konstanze starts to behave very much like the hard-nosed money-grubber her detractors have accused her of being, it's more a cause for sadness than surprise. Her story doesn't end there, however, and in an exquisitely moving scene at Mozart's grave she finally makes her peace with his memory. Written with a light touch behind which lies a huge wealth of research, Mozart's Wife is definitely historical, decidedly unromantic, and quite captivating.

Rating:
Summary: MOZART'S WIFE--A Wealth Of Detail
Review: This author's fictionalized account of Constanze Webber--an extraordinary woman who just happened to marry an even more extraordinary man named Mozart--brings 18th Century Vienna and its people vividly alive. Constanze would have been a remarkable woman for any era, struggling with her own perspective on life while trying to cope and understand the icon composer with whom she chose to share her life. But as an 18th Century woman, she is all the more remarkable.

This book is well written and thoroughly researched, that's obvious from the details in dialogue and events. I suspect little of this work is pure fiction, though, given the vast availability of historical information on Mozart and his contemporaries. However, the author melds background information with fictional material so seamlessly, it all seems real. Despite knowing a lot about the man already, I'm even more convinced now that Mozart was one of a kind in history and so was his wife Constanze.

To me, great writing is all about imagery, characterization and dialogue. MOZART'S WIFE has all of that and more. Plus, it's a real eye opener to Mozart himself as seen by his closest companion. If you like historical fiction with a wealth of factual detail, this book should be on your reading list.

Jon Baxley
Editor
Amazing Authors Showcase

Rating:
Summary: A good portrayal of Constanze
Review: This book was a very good read and at times, hard to put down. I enjoyed seeing life through Constanze's eyes, and it was interesting to watch her 'evolve' from one of the youngest Weber children, often overshadowed by Aloyisa; to newlywed Frau Mozart, disliked by her inlaws who are so dear to Mozart; to a woman trying to save the money that slips so easily through her husband's fingers. I personally could have done with a few less of the "bedroom" scenes; and Mozart's way of death may be a little controversial. By the end of the book, her attitude was leaving me with a sour feeling. However, this is a good, well researched portrayal of Constanze, who seems, too often, to get stuck in a bad light by biographers.

Rating:
Summary: THIS is life with Mozart!!
Review: THIS is life with Mozart from his wife's point of view...
The story will transport you back to the 18th century, reads easily and is entirely engrossing. It was one of the few books that has kept me up reading until the sun rose! The writing is so stark and raw, no flowery romanticism, just honest, straightforward realism. Although I personally found neither Mozart nor Konstanze likable, they were completely, charmingly, and utterly human, flaws and all.
Mozart's Wife is one of the best books I have read in many years. I highly recommend that you don't waste another day without reading this incredible book!