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Summary: Music, Time Theory, Race: How does he do it?
Review: The government should immediately construct a time-status machine and put Richard Powers in it so that he can continue writing novels for eternity. Every time I read one of his novels I come away almost speechless. As a result I limit myself to one of them every 3 or 4 years; otherwise I'd be mute. Powers takes on the issue of race in the United States in his novel. He uses music and time theory as two ways to advance the plot. If you think the three issues are unrelated, just hold on, Powers makes the case and seals it shut. The enigmatic message of the white, Jewish father to his black, estranged daughter says a lot about this novel: "No matter where you point your telescope, there is a different wavelength." (I hope I got that right, I gave my copy of the book to a friend). I can't say how much I admire this novel. Read it at your own risk; it will change the way you think.
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Summary: Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Review: The monumental gifts this book has to offer have already been ennumerated by the reviews already in place. I can only add that this book held me for all of its stupendous length. Mr. Powers is a writer of such erudition and scope, that his accomplishments are, indeed, staggering.
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Summary: Powers' best novel
Review: The Time of Our Singing is filled with Richard Powers' usual ambitious and startling gumbo of history and science (how the future and the past collaborate themselves into existence in this novel is utterly thrilling), but Singing rises above his other remarkable novels, I believe, because of the characters who come so alive in these pages. They're all deeply flawed individuals who still elicit the reader's interest and sympathy. Their wounds are so familiar, steeped in and beyond race, and I wanted them to be better than they were, kinder, happier, and yet people are who they are, and it's the gap between could and should, want to and can't that give these characters such life.
David Strom and Delia Daley fall enough in love to ignore their racial divide, but the world is unwilling to forgive them--or their children. Though the parents try to forge their childrens' strength in the making of music, this talented family can't hold together their own song. Poor Joseph is paralyzed by his devotion to his gifted brother, Jonah, who in turn treats Joseph to off-handed, casual cruelty. Sister Ruth is treated almost as an afterthought, and so rejects one family and forges another. Meanwhile, history begins to pick them off, one by one.
A tragic, haunting story--not only of a family but of our country, as well--and yet oddly hopeful. Throughout the sweep of this marvelous novel these complex characters held me, and now I find they won't let me go.
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Summary: Race, Music, and Time--A Complex Braid
Review: This book fell off the library shelves into my hands without my having any previous knowledge of Powers' writing. I am a liberal white who to my shame "follows" Civil Rights without much involvement. I know the history of the Holocaust. And I know little about music. But I gulped this book even when I didn't follow the windings of time theory or music theory. I didn't always like Jonah, sacrificing everything and everybody, including himself, to his musical gift. I didn't think Ruthie was a very fully realized character during most of the book--but then she kept herself away from the family. And Joseph was full of his own faults, none of which he hid. But all of these were in fact virtues of the book, which presented its characters as real people. I get tired of books that try to present only perfect characters. I was so moved by David and Delia Stern, in their brave and ultimately misguided--or was it?--decision to raise their children "without race." They would give them the best of both the black and white worlds, and let them choose. This is not unlike the Catholic and Jewish couple who decide to raise their children outside any religious structure and let their children choose a religion when they grow up. The only difference is that you can't tell by looking. David and Delia, in spite of her multiple "impossibles" allowed love to blind themselves to the reality that their children would be various shades of brown. And that people, both whites and blacks, would react to their color. This is their tragedy. And yet, and yet, what they did for and with their children within their home and in their musical evenings was so beautiful and gave their children so much. That tension underlies everything else in the novel for me. And the music soars, even when it descends from the glories of Jonah's triumphs and gets down to the Glimmer Room in Atlantic City, and back up again to a complex children's choir in Ruth's elementary school in Berkley. I've never heard something so non-verbal put into words so effectively before. I didn't always understand it, but I couldn't skip over those parts. There are so many other references in this book that add to the whole. For instance, the punctuation of the three large civil rights events at the Washington Mall that influence three generations of the Strom family, each with its reference to promise for the race and potential loss of one individual. Two other references are less clear but may send me back to re-read Ralph Ellison. At the first LA riot, someone paints the light Jonah with a looted paintbrush, to make clear that he's black, not white. At the second riot, Jonah does the same to other people. In Ellison's "Invisible Man," which I haven't read for thirty years so might be remembering incorrectly, the hero, a black man who can't be seen by whites, has to paint himself to be noticed. As another connection, clearly David's work as a physicist is related to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Is this work related to his clear mental deterioration after the war? To his time-warp resurrection of constant conversation with the long-dead Delia? I did not want to put this book down (heavy as it was) or see it end. It was a most satisfying book, and scenes, characters, themes, have not let go of me. I will read more Powers.
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Summary: One of the finest novels I've read in recent years
Review: This is a hard book to review. I've been a fan of Powers' novels since first reading The Goldbug Variations about 15 years ago, and have read everything he's written since then. While I have been disappointed by a couple of his books, I've nevertheless continued buying them. I won't talk about the story, nor will I talk about the characters; others have done so in reviews here. But the one thing that moved me deeply was Powers' ability to write about music like no one else. Never have I read a novel where music was important, and where the author truly understands music enough to describe its inner emotions. Another magnificent element is the science fictionish ending that ties back to an event near the beginning of the story. I had a chill in my spine as I read the ending of this book, and I look forward to reading it again in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Neither fish nor foul
Review: This is not a book of ideas - it is a loose tapestry of music theory and the physics of time woven around a weak narrative concerning characters that do not engage the reader on any emotional level. The exposition, through inner thought and the scant experience of the characters about race in America, is interesting, especially when placed against the Jewish experience of the boys' father but that's all there was for me. I don't care what happens to Jonah - he's too lost in his world, too much not of the real world to be a proper character. I don't understand why Ruth abandoned everyone in her life - who taught her, what was the turning point - she was too young when her mother died for that to be it. I wish I cared for the characters, I wish I wasn't so bored with the musicology and I wish it had all fit together better.
Rating: 
Summary: Lyrical, sprawling family drama
Review: This sprawling family drama weaves together seemingly disparate elements as music, physics, and race relations in mid-20th-century America. Beautifully and lyrically written as befits its musical theme, the main story line is recounted by Joseph, middle child of a German-Jewish physicist and an African-American classically-trained musician, and younger brother and accompanist to gifted singer Jonah. Music and race define the characters' lives and form the key themes of the story. Sometimes Powers' descriptions conveyed the feeling of being transported by music; sometimes they conveyed the futility of even trying to describe that feeling. As brown-skinned, biracial classical musicians, Joseph and Jonah feel marginal in whatever milieu they find themselves, giving their plight added resonance and allowing for the exploration of the whole concept of race. A secondary theme of the relativity of time, is woven into the manner in which the story is told. Time moves forward in traditional narrative; it doubles back on itself as the past history of the characters is told; the space between musical notes can last an eternity. The characters seem to dismiss their father's preoccupation with the nature of time even as it is as integral to their life experience as the more obvious element of race. I give 4 stars instead of 5 because the book eventually becomes overlong and repetitive and because the racial theme at times seemed overplayed. I'm not qualified to judge whether the novel accurately depicts the experience of being black or biracial in America - and even as I type this I recognize that there is no one black or biracial experience. However, it seemed to me that many of the characters' experiences could have been interpreted in terms of other factors such as gender or "American-ness" just as convincingly as race, and that race was too often an easy excuse for family members failure to understand each other. Spend some delightful hours immersed in this book and see what you think.
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