Rating: 
Summary: Pretentious
Review: There have been many novels with musical themes - Mann's Doctor Faustus; Vikram Seth's An Equal Music; Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, to name one acknowledged masterpiece and two more recent books. This is another. It's the hauntingly told story of a virtuoso cellist, Isabel Masurovsky, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, himself a pianist. In a mélange of remembering and forgetting she believes she has lost her musical gift forever; she is adrift. The style of writing is somewhat disjunct, but close reading allows one to catch the thread of the narrative, and one realizes that the disjointed narrative reflects Isabel's inner life as she struggles to reclaim her gift and begin her life anew. The story itself is harrowing, yet tender and wise. But the novel's main glory is Hackett's use of language. A couple of examples, picked almost at random: "I floated out into his flood of language, grabbing at branches, but not understanding much." "Milan is a grim, gray, German city. Its few surviving Italian grace notes dim amid chord after heavy chord of industrial postwar morass." The writer obviously knows a great deal about music and, for this musical reader, her surefootedness on musical topics helps make it a joy to read. So often writers strike false notes in their musical prose. Recommended urgently.
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