Rating: 
Summary: Life imitates art, imitates life.
Review: A beautifully written novel of young love revisited. Terry Kay is a gifted writer, with an uncanny ability to deliver this remarkable tale right to your heart. Bobo and Amy...I feel like I know them personally.
Rating:
Summary: Life imitates art, imitates life.
Review: A beautifully written novel of young love revisited. Terry Kay is a gifted writer, with an uncanny ability to deliver this remarkable tale right to your heart. Bobo and Amy...I feel like I know them personally.
Rating: 
Summary: A Keeper
Review: I read the hardback AFTER I heard this book on tape. I played it in the car on a 200 mile trip and was so enamoured of it that I checked it out of my local library again, a month later. I have listened to it at least half a dozen times and never seem to tire of it. I am now considering purchasing my own copy, something I have never done with any book on tape! The story is simply beautiful and I identified with much of it.
Rating:
Summary: Loving and beautiful story about love
Review: I really enjoyed the book, at first it was a little confusing and hard to understand, but as the pages started turning I fell in love with the book. The whole idea that Bobo and Amy Lourie met and fell in love in the Catskills with so many things against them intrigues me. His friendship with Avrum was weird but made the story more interesting. My favorite part of the book was when Amy and Bobo meet each other 40 years later and still are in love. This is my 1st Terry Kay book and I loved it, I hope to read another one of his books soon.
Rating:
Summary: Romantic novel rises above nostalgia
Review: I was initially drawn to this book because it takes place in a region close to my own, the Catskills of upstate New York. Indeed, location plays a large role in this compelling story of love lost and possibly found many years later. Terry Kay's atmospheric novel evokes the lush scenery of this area and also the bygone days of thriving Jewish resorts. Shadow Song is about the very long (in time as well as space) journey of Bobo Murphy from the deep South to an upstate New York resort, where he falls in love with a beautiful but inaccessible Jewish girl named Amy Lourie. He also befriends an eccentric but wise older man named Avrum. These elements would probably not make a good film --the subtlety of the prose would be lost and all that would remain would be mushy sentimentality. This is, to be sure, a nostalgic and sentimental love story. Yet the novel manages to work anyway, most likely because the author really believes in his characters and their emotions. Nostalgia, after all, can be a part of real life. Shadow Song dives directly into this theme without flinching and makes us believe in it and care about the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, a grown-up book about love
Review: I won't repeat what everyone else said who liked this book - but would just add that I liked the measured pace that allowed the story to fully explore all its elements. I didn't find it repetitive - rather, there was musicality in the way motifs were revisited throughout the story. Finally, as nobody seems to be mentioning the "a" word - adultery - is this the last taboo, that people haven't come out of the closet about? - it was a joy to read a book with a mature and realistic outlook on that subject. It's about time! Similarly, religion. I wish I could find more books like this that reflect and illuminate the world I really live in.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully told story
Review: Maybe i missed the point entirely, but i had a hard time enjoying this book. I did not understand the manipulation that Avrum exerted on Bobo, i did not understand the relationship between Bobo, Amy and Carter (some 38 years later they are still as friendly as ever), and i certainly did not understand how Bobo could have changed his mind at the very end of the story after hearing "The Shadow Song". This book tries too hard to be lyric and inspired, and fails in the reality check department. I think it falls right there with another fantasy work, _The Bridges of Madison County_.I haven't read anything else by this author, but this book was a waste of my time. Read something else!
Rating:
Summary: Could not put it down ...
Review: Once I got into this story, it had me captivated by the eccentricity of the primary characters. Flip-flopping between then and now, 1955 and 199? was an effective technique for this book. The antics the teenage characters pull remind me of the days when I was their age. As the characters show themselves as adults, it is obvious how a true love really impacts us, regardless of time or age. Terry Kay had me going from laughing out loud to crying tears near the end. I am sure my children thought I, too, was as off the wall as Avrum was thought to be. A friend loaned me the book, now I am buying a copy for myself to re-read!
Rating:
Summary: Makes you hear the voice of the music
Review: Terry Kay has the ability to make you hear the music of an old dreamer, and make it your own. He can also make you believe in ghosts, and makes you want to welcome them home. Though briefly told, this story encompasses most of our century: from an opera house in 1918, to young love in 1955, and then on to matured love in 1993. I first heard of this book at a Terry Kay book-signing last fall, where I had him sign The Runaway, his latest, and To Dance with the White Dog, his best known. In the long line of waiting admirers (it took me three hours), some of them kept saying that Shadow Song was their favorite book by Kay. Strangely, they would close their eyes, as though they were listening to something. Now that I've finished the book, I understand. I also recommend to anyone planning to read this book that they acquire a recording of the "Ombra leggiera" (Shadow Song) from Giacomo Meyerbeer's "Dinorah" and listen to it before they begin reading. And then listen to it again WHILE reading the final scene. It is a remarkable experience. My CD version features the great Maria Callas. However, to make the experience authentic, I may look for a recording by Amelita Galli-Curci. I know that that old Jew, Avrum Feldman, would have it no other way. Come to think of it, I might even pick up a couple of candlesticks and pull out an old picture of a long-lost love. That would really make him happy. I can hear him now, urging from his bench, "Go, Go."
Rating:
Summary: Makes you hear the voice of the music
Review: Terry Kay has the ability to make you hear the music of an old dreamer, and make it your own. He can also make you believe in ghosts, and makes you want to welcome them home. Though briefly told, this story encompasses most of our century: from an opera house in 1918, to young love in 1955, and then on to matured love in 1993. I first heard of this book at a Terry Kay book-signing last fall, where I had him sign The Runaway, his latest, and To Dance with the White Dog, his best known. In the long line of waiting admirers (it took me three hours), some of them kept saying that Shadow Song was their favorite book by Kay. Strangely, they would close their eyes, as though they were listening to something. Now that I've finished the book, I understand. I also recommend to anyone planning to read this book that they acquire a recording of the "Ombra leggiera" (Shadow Song) from Giacomo Meyerbeer's "Dinorah" and listen to it before they begin reading. And then listen to it again WHILE reading the final scene. It is a remarkable experience. My CD version features the great Maria Callas. However, to make the experience authentic, I may look for a recording by Amelita Galli-Curci. I know that that old Jew, Avrum Feldman, would have it no other way. Come to think of it, I might even pick up a couple of candlesticks and pull out an old picture of a long-lost love. That would really make him happy. I can hear him now, urging from his bench, "Go, Go."
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