Rating: 
Summary: An ingenious manipulation of the reader's perceptions.
Review: In this dazzling tour de force, Maurensig plays a clever intellectual game, setting traps for the reader, his prey. Fiendish in his deceptions, he actively engages our emotions from the outset, evoking curiosity about his mysterious characters and their circumstances, inspiring sympathy for teenage musicians surviving psychological torment in music school, and creating enormous empathy for an orphaned boy, homeless, unloved, and passionate about his music. We feel rather than think, we get caught, and we love it.
What makes the book even more remarkable to me is that while the author is playing tricks with the reader's emotions and views of reality, he is also creating a passionate tribute to the power of music and artfully structuring his book in the pattern of a musical canon--a round, in which a "melody" is introduced and then chased indefinitely by its imitation, until, as in this novel, it rises "to its supreme fulfillment in an original burst of mutual genius...and [then begins] its descent, its countdown,...its canone inverso."
The symbolic melody of a valuable 16th century Stainer violin sets the voices of the canon's narrative aswirl. The first voice, an unnamed old man, buys the violin at auction. The second voice, a writer and passionate lover of music, comes to his hotel the next day to see, and attempt to buy, the violin from its new owner. He tells the old man the story of Jeno Varga, a Hungarian itinerant musician who once owned the violin and who stupefied a tavern audience, playing rapturously the previous year. "One of music's fighters" whose career had, for some reason, been interrupted, Jeno becomes the third and dominant voice as he tells his story to the writer.
Many readers have talked about reading the book a second time to answer questions about Jeno and his life and to understand the ending. While I rarely reread a book, I did with this one, marveling at the author's cleverness, amazed at how clearly the characters and events fall into place and the questions are answered, once one has the benefit of hindsight. Dozens of clues and peculiar statements, which I ignored in the first reading, stand out clearly on the second, especially those pertaining to time. The irony of the title is stunning. Like music, this story improves and begins to reveal itself more completely the second time around. Encore. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: An ingenious manipulation of the reader¿s perceptions.
Review: In this dazzling tour de force, Maurensig plays a clever intellectual game, setting traps for the reader, his prey. Fiendish in his deceptions, he actively engages our emotions from the outset, evoking curiosity about his mysterious characters and their circumstances, inspiring sympathy for teenage musicians surviving psychological torment in music school, and creating enormous empathy for an orphaned boy, homeless, unloved, and passionate about his music. We feel rather than think, we get caught, and we love it.What makes the book even more remarkable to me is that while the author is playing tricks with the reader's emotions and views of reality, he is also creating a passionate tribute to the power of music and artfully structuring his book in the pattern of a musical canon--a round, in which a "melody" is introduced and then chased indefinitely by its imitation, until, as in this novel, it rises "to its supreme fulfillment in an original burst of mutual genius...and [then begins] its descent, its countdown,...its canone inverso." The symbolic melody of a valuable 16th century Stainer violin sets the voices of the canon's narrative aswirl. The first voice, an unnamed old man, buys the violin at auction. The second voice, a writer and passionate lover of music, comes to his hotel the next day to see, and attempt to buy, the violin from its new owner. He tells the old man the story of Jeno Varga, a Hungarian itinerant musician who once owned the violin and who stupefied a tavern audience, playing rapturously the previous year. "One of music's fighters" whose career had, for some reason, been interrupted, Jeno becomes the third and dominant voice as he tells his story to the writer. Many readers have talked about reading the book a second time to answer questions about Jeno and his life and to understand the ending. While I rarely reread a book, I did with this one, marveling at the author's cleverness, amazed at how clearly the characters and events fall into place and the questions are answered, once one has the benefit of hindsight. Dozens of clues and peculiar statements, which I ignored in the first reading, stand out clearly on the second, especially those pertaining to time. The irony of the title is stunning. Like music, this story improves and begins to reveal itself more completely the second time around. Encore.
Rating:
Summary: Exotic Clockwork, by fermed
Review: My preference in novels is for books that are realistic and mirror the society in which they take place; I like to enter the universes created by writers, with the single proviso that such places must be believable enough to totally absorb me. So I was surprised by having to give (in all fairness) this novel its five stars despite its violation of my verisimilitude requirements. But in truth, this is not a novel, but a carefully crafted mechanical device composed entirely of words, intricate and at times unfathomably complex, but one that moves and has rhythms, its gears engaged, every "tick" followed by its inevitable "tock;" a machine that works and is probably extremely accurate in what it does, even though, in the end, one is not sure what it is that it does. I appreciated the warnings from other reviewers that the book may need to be read twice before it is fully grasped; a violation of general principles: the writer should have one chance to engage our attention, not two. Yet Canone Inverso was surely better in its re-reading. It is a short book, consumable in one sitting. Its prose is exquisite, its translation so good that one does not notice it, and its effect on the reader's mind is galvanizing. Exotic, intricate, playing with dangerous themes of good and evil, of trust and hatred, of life and death, this confection is not a toy, but a serious intrument of reflection. A joy for seekers of word pleasures.
Rating: 
Summary: A gripping story that leaves too many unanswered questions
Review: On the advice of a friend I bought this book. As I began reading, I was pleasantly surprised by the book's excellence. I am sorry that the author didn't maintain it to the very end. The mysterious circumstances of the story immediately caught my attention, demanding me to continue reading. In the middle of the book I feel that story begins to stray a bit from Jenö, the main character, and his passions and ambition. I found the end to be rather abrupt and one that answers far too little. The bits of information that the author offers do not add up, leaving the ending and the true fate of the characters open to much debate. I would have preferred a clearer ending. However, it is an excellent story and one that you will not be able to forget for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: I've been manipulated again by a superb storyteller
Review: Once again Paola Maurensig weaves a masterful story - tightly written with twists and turns that surprise without breaking the spell of reality. My biggest complaint is that the book is easily read in one sitting - a virtue for the book as there is nothing extraneous in it - but hideous for the reader who has to wait from a third novel by Paolo Maurensig to see if she can pull off a great novel a third time.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most beautifully written books I have ever read
Review: Paolo Maurensig has woven a beautiful tale about the simplest of subjects -- a violin. From the first chapter, the book draws you in. The characters are finely crafted, the story tragic yet compelling.
Rating:
Summary: AN ENGROSSING, HARD-TO-PUT-DOWN TALE
Review: Paolo Maurensig's second novel, CANONE INVERSO, is told in the form of an oral history of an oral history -- it is a dark story, but a compelling and human one. After purchasing an unusually beautiful antique violin at an auction, the buyer is visited in his hotel room by a mysterious stranger. The man tells him that he was planning to bid on the instrument himself, but was unable to arrive at the auction in time. Noticing a strangeness about the man, along with a seemingly emotional attachment to the instrument, the buyer inquires further, and the man begins to tell the story of the violin -- which involves his retelling of an older story, told to him by the instrument's former owner, sitting at a sidewalk cafe table in Vienna, long ago. The story is an unusual and gripping one -- I found this novel especially hard to set aside, and finished it the day after I started it (I had to force myself to go to bed). The story told by the man in Vienna involves himself and another boy -- both musical prodigies -- who met while attending a prestigious musucal institute in Austria just before the outbreak of World War II. The talent that the two boys shared draws them together into a long and difficult friendship -- and the novel has much to say, cloaked within its gripping story, of the nature of friendship, its blessings as well as its pitfalls. Maurensig's prose is liquid and beautiful, reproducing perfectly the sense of an oral history. As the story unfolds before the reader's eyes -- and into the listener's ears -- aspects of the boys' lives are revealed like new days dawning over time. This is some very effective storytelling. At the heart of their lives is their love of music -- and they each love it in different ways, for different reasons. The conclusion of the story is not altogether unexpected, but neither is it telegraphed in an obvious way -- Maurensig's talents are obvious and formidable, making this book a great joy to experience. I look forward to reading his first novel, THE LUNEBERG VARIATIONS.
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and eloquent
Review: The format of a story within story (within a story) is one that Maurensig is successful and obviously most comfortable with since both this and The Luneberg Variation take the same format. In this, his second novel, Maurensig tells the story of a beautiful voilin with a strange carving on it, which goes up for auction and is bought by someone who obviously has a long history with it. Upon taking it home, a stranger comes knocking who wants nothing more than to lay eyes on the violin, to authenticate its existance. Curious, the new owner of the instrument asks him why he is so interested in this particular violin and the stranger tells the story of how he came to learn of it. He tells about an eccentric violin virtuoso he met many years ago, who told _him_ a story about the beautiful violin with a strange carving which belonged to him. The eccentric is the topic of his own story, relating the events of his life, the cruel music school he endured, his friendship with a young schoolmate who considered himself more talented than he, and his relationship -- which was his lifeline really -- with this particular instrument. To elaborate any more would mean filling the review with spoilers. Sufficing to say, it is an engaging book, haunting and eloquent, and very satisfying in the realization of its ending which puts a surprising new light on the story within a story within a story the reader has just encountered.
Rating:
Summary: A book that will grab you in the first few pages
Review: The story of two, young and very accomplished violinists from two very different backgrounds. They meet in a music school in pre-war Vienna. As they mature, something sinister develops in one as it does in the country itself. The story begins with the auction (many years later) of a violin which was owned by one of them. The author tells his story around this violin which in the end reveals the connection between the two violinists. I found it a great Sunday afternoon read, next to a fire.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Greatest Novels...
Review: This book is amazingly written with descriptions that will blow your mind. By the first chapter, I was completely enveloped into the story, and by the end I was completely floored by it. To Kill a Mockingbird USED to be my favorite book, but now, I'm not so sure. If you do not pick this one up - musician or not - you're missing out on something delicious.
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