The Kreutzer Sonata : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: "Don't PLAY the notes...just humanize them."
Review: Tolstoy's novella entitled "The Kreutzer Sonata" inspired composer Leos Janacek to write his Kreutzer Sonata for strings, years later, and that, in turn, inspired Margriet de Moor to create this novella. In Tolstoy's story, a man on a train tells another passenger the story of how and why he murdered his wife. The man and his wife were both musicians, and the husband, insanely jealous, believed she was having an affair with another musician.

Adapting Tolstoy's passionate and violent story, de Moor introduces an unnamed narrator, a musicologist, who meets Marius Van Vlooten, a blind music critic, at an airport as they are both leaving for International String Quartet Week in Bordeaux. While there, the narrator introduces Suzanna Flier, the beautiful first violinist of the Schulhoff Quartet to Van Vlooten, whose previous relationship was so passionate that he blinded himself in a failed suicide attempt when his lover left him. Suzanna Flier's quartet has been practicing Janacek's Kreutzer Sonata, "a fatal psychological drama that no earthly power could bring to a halt." Soon Suzanna and Van Vlooten are engaged in a torrid affair

Ten years later, the narrator sees Van Vlooten again at an airport, and, through flashbacks, Van Vlooten tells the narrator the story of his marriage to Suzanna, which was marred by his uncontrollable jealousy. Sixteen years after this meeting, the narrator, on his way to Amsterdam learns the conclusion of the story.

Author de Moor's tautly constructed and romantic story explores the relationship of Suzanna Flier and Marius Van Vlooten. Symbols (butterflies, water), like musical motifs in a sonata, abound in the novel. In crystalline prose, de Moor selects details which reveal the point of view of a man dependent upon sound, instead of sight--"Trees are only trees as long as the wind blows." As he creates Van Vlooten's life with Suzanna, the reader alternately sympathizes with Van Vlooten and becomes angry with him because he uses his need for consistency as a means of control.

De Moor does an admirable job of giving an old story a new twist, and her conclusion is surprising. Romantic in that the action is often implausible and carried to extremes, the novel is nevertheless fascinating reading. De Moor is so observant of details and conveys them so perceptively that the reader cannot help but feel that s/he is learning something new--about the blind, about musicians, and about lovers as they interpret their worlds. Mary Whipple