Tag: music

Review 2557: Cousin Rosamund

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Cousin Rosamund is the third book in West’s Aubrey family series, and another was planned. I couldn’t tell when reading it, but apparently West died before finishing the second book, This Real Night, so it was finished from fragments and notes. Cousin Rosamund was assembled the same way, although West’s style was certainly captured.

The novel begins sometime after World War I. The three Aubrey girls, Rose, Mary, and Cordelia, are the only ones left of their immediate family, but they still have Nancy, their old neighbor; their beloved cousin Rosamund; and the folks at the pub on the river. Cordelia, always the odd girl out, has become less hostile since her marriage.

Cousin Rosamund comes to tell Rose and Mary that Nancy is getting married. Mary especially is upset that Nancy didn’t tell her herself, but Rosamund’s intercession, they see later, is needed so that they will not judge Oswald on sight, for he is gauche, awkward, unattractive, and a man-‘splainer. But he loves Nancy and she him, and that is all that counts.

Rose and Mary are now both successful and famous pianists, but neither is interested in marriage. Mary, in fact, seems to find the idea distasteful, although they are glad to see their friends happily married.

Inexplicably, Rosamund, who has been working as a nurse, marries one of her patients. The girls are all hurt not to be invited to the wedding, and once they meet the groom, they are horrified. His name is Nestor Ganymedios, and he is rich, extremely vulgar, ugly, and probably dishonest in his business dealings. Further, they see almost nothing of her after the marriage.

This novel is about marriage, which West examines in several incarnations. Unfortunately, it ends before we learn the explanation for Rosamund’s choice, but at least West’s intentions for the entire series are explained in the Afterword of my Penguin edition.

All of these novels are beautifully written and show a profound knowledge of music. The girls have such pure affection for the small number of people they love, yet the characters are realistically drawn.

One caveat: In this novel some characters express outdated ideas about homosexuality, and some homosexual characters in the book are not depicted positively, but it is not clear when she wrote this. The first book went to the publishers in 1956, at which point she said she planned three more, but though she finished most of the second, she seemed unable to finish this one. It ends about 1929, but her original plans were to encompass World War II.

Although it doesn’t fit the context of what I’ve discussed, I wanted to give just one quote because it’s so lucid and poetically spare. Rose has seemingly been disgusted with her long-time friend Oliver after he told her the story of his first marriage despite its end not being his fault. She is really fighting a battle with herself. She enters a room where he is.

He came toward me and I became rigid with disgust, it seemed certain that I must die when he touched me, but instead, of course, I lived.

Wow.

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Review 2545: This Real Night

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This Real Night is the second book in West’s Aubrey family trilogy, which starts with The Fountain Overflows. I put The Fountain Overflows on my Top Ten list for last year, and this novel is just as good.

The novel begins just after the girls’ father leaves them. He is beloved by all, but he is a gambling addict who has lost all their money many times, and when he leaves, goes with a collection of jewels he had hidden from their mother. Since he left, their mother has sold some paintings that she pretended were worthless, so they, although nowhere near well off, are comparatively comfortable.

Their mother was once a famous concert pianist, and she has trained the twins, Rose and Mary, to become pianists. Soon they will start music school. Their older sister, Cordelia, who was convinced by a teacher that she was a talented violinist, has finally realized that she is not, but she decides she wants to become an assistant in an art gallery. She begins studying art history. Their brother Richard Quin is still a schoolboy.

Their household is expanded because their Aunt Constance and beloved cousin Rosamund have moved in. Constance’s husband, although wealthy, is so stingy that they can’t support their household, as he only spends money on his spiritualism hobby.

One advantage of their father’s absence is that they can continue their friendship with Mr. Morpurgo. He had been a great supporter of their father, hiring him to be an editor of his paper, for their father was a brilliant political writer. Like all of their father’s past supporters and friends, Mr. Morpurgo broke with him, probably over a series of unpaid debts.

The novel begins with a visit from a strained, ill-looking Mr. Morpurgo, lately returned from a trip abroad. It is Richard Quin and Rosamund who figure out that their father has died, probably a suicide, but they don’t tell anyone. Rose only learns after she overhears them talking sometime later.

The family story continues relating fairly mundane events, but they are made interesting by the vibrant narration and the perceptions of this highly intelligent and gifted family. They are also very loving with each other except for Cordelia, whom Rose thinks hates them all and who definitely processes information differently than the others. For example, they all deeply love Richard Quin, who is attractive, charismatic, and kind, but Cordelia thinks he is going to be a failure.

The family faces difficulties such as the girls’ sense that people, especially men, don’t like them, the problems of Aunt Lily, whose sister is serving time for murder, and the revelation by Rose’s new professor that she has been trained wrongly for her talents. They are a family you fall in love with. The novel ends at the beginning of World War I.

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Review 2501: Novellas in November! Young Man with a Horn

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I read Young Man with a Horn to fill a hole in my Century of Books project but, as has happened several times already, by the time I got to it, I had already read a book for that year. (I made a list of my to-read pile years to avoid this, but now I’ve lost the list!) However, at 171 pages, it qualifies for Novellas in November.

Young Man with a Horn is Baker’s debut novel and is still her best known. She seems to like to tackle complicated subjects and what were at the time fringe characters. (For example, she subtly indicates in Cassandra at the Wedding that Cassandra is gay.)

We know from the beginning that this novel is not going to have a happy ending. The anonymous narrator makes that clear in the Prologue. And about that narrator—the novel is related in a loose, conversational style, like someone might use to tell the story to a friend.

In the 1920s, Rick Martin is a 14-year-old orphan at the beginning of the novel. School isn’t working for him and he spends most of his time in the library until he finds a piano in an unlocked church and teaches himself to play, which doesn’t take long.

He decides he wants a trumpet, though, because it’s easier to carry around. His young aunt and uncle are very poor, so to buy one he needs a job. He gets one setting pins at a bowling alley. There he meets Smoke Jordan, an older Black boy who is a drummer. Eventually, they start hanging out to talk about music (after Rick gets over some racist notions). They like sitting behind a club where Smoke’s neighbor, Jeff Williams, has a band which is getting to be well known, a bunch of gifted Black men. Eventually, they are invited inside, and when Rick gets his trumpet, he convinces the trumpet player to give him lessons. It’s jazz Rick is interested in rather than the dance music the band plays in public. It becomes almost the only thing he is interested in.

The book traces his career as he becomes one of the best jazz trumpet players in the country. Baker draws a convincing portrait of an obsessed personality. It’s fairly fast-moving, and the only part I didn’t really appreciate was the blaming of his wife for the failure of their marriage.

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Review 1824: The Big Music

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This high-concept novel is admittedly a bit demanding to read. Although it is the story of difficult family relationships, a distinguished heritage, a dying man, it is written to convey a sense of the piobaireachd, the classical form of bagpipe music, a type of music dependent upon repetition and embellishment.

John Callum Sutherland, an old man nearing his death, is trying to complete a piobaireachd called “Lament for Himself.” Because of his fears of his father, a famous piper, John Callum as a young man left behind his long, distinguished family history and vowed never to return. Only once he returned after his father’s death and met Margaret MacKay, the housekeeper, did he realize what he missed by leaving, the music and the great love.

Now, dying and off his meds, John Callum needs a new note for his piobaireachd. He decides he can find it by taking Katherine Anna, Margaret’s infant granddaughter as well as his own, to his small hidden hut where he works on his music. As he goes, he imagines the melodies made by Helen, Margaret’s daughter, when she finds her baby is missing.

Margaret has summoned Callum Innes, John Callum’s son, from the south because she knows John Callum doesn’t have long to live. Callum has never lived in the remote family home in Sutherland. He has only spent his boyhood summers there and has never felt part of it. He too fears his father.

This novel is about a family home, a family legacy, music, and the relationships between fathers and sons. It is at times touching, but it appeals more to the cerebral than to the emotional. Not only is the novel written in the form of the piobaireachd and attempts to convey the music, but it is heavily annotated and makes the novel itself, and the writing of it, the center of the story in the postmodern fashion. Finally, it provides nearly 100 pages of appendixes for those interested in the history of the family, the piobaireachd form, the geography of the area, and many other topics.

I found this novel, which I read for my James Tait Black project, more intellectually interesting than involving. I have to admit to tiring of some of its repetitions, most often of the footnotes in continually referring readers to the appendixes.

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Review 1759: White Tears

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You may think you know what’s going on in White Tears, but you don’t. Kunzru provides a few clues to that effect, but it’s easy to glide right over them.

Seth is a nerdy outcast in college when he meets Carter Wallace, a good-looking, popular rich kid. The two bond over sound and music. Seth has been immersing himself in techno when Carter introduces him to the gritty sounds of old-time Black country soul on vinyl and even older 45s.

After college, the two form a recording company, with Carter as the face and Seth doing the creative work and sound engineering. They are beginning to become famous for an old-fashioned sound, produced entirely by analog instruments. But Seth notices Carter losing focus and becoming more engaged with collecting.

One day, Seth is indulging his hobby of walking around New York recording noises when he catches someone singing part of a blues song, “Believe I buy me a graveyard of my own.” He plays it for Carter, who becomes obsessed with it. Carter uses the fragments from Seth’s recording to make what sounds like an old-time record, complete with cracking noises. Then he mocks up a picture of a 45, invents a singer, Charlie Shaw, and advertises the fake record on a collectors’ website.

What starts out as a seemingly harmless prank has serious consequences. Soon, apparently meeting a collector who wants to buy the fake record, Carter is severely beaten and left in a coma. Seth finds out his company and their apartment are both owned by the family corporation, and he is immediately dispossessed, the family claiming he is just a hanger-on. But Seth and Carter’s sister Leonie want to know what happened to Carter.

This novel is dark and unexpected. At first, I wasn’t so interested in the story about Carter and his fanboy Seth, neither of whom are that likable, but eventually I got sucked in. Again, it’s a novel I wouldn’t have chosen for myself, but I read it for my James Tait Black project.

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Review 1511: Nocturnes

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Nocturnes is a collection of five loosely linked short stories all on the themes of music and night. A few of them are linked a little more closely by repeating characters. All but one feature struggling musicians.

In “Crooner,” the unnamed narrator is an Eastern European guitarist eking out a living in Venice when he meets Tony Gardner, a once-famous singer his mother listened to. When Tony invites him to help serenade his wife, Lindy, he learns that Tony is so eager to make a comeback that he is willing to give up something he loves.

In “Come Rain or Come Shine,” Ray, a middle-aged English language instructor, is invited to stay with his old school friends, Charlie and Emily. Once there, though, he finds he’s been invited to be a negative contrast to Charlie, showing how much more successful Charlie is. He finds common ground with Emily only in their shared taste in music.

In “Malvern Hills,” a would-be singer-songwriter is staying with his sister and helping out at her café when he meets two professional musicians, Tibs and Sonja, on holiday. He unwittingly gets involved in the breakup of their marriage.

The narrator of “Nocturne” is a gifted saxophone player whose ex-wife and manager convince him that he would be successful if he wasn’t so ugly. Reluctantly, he agrees to have plastic surgery. In a hotel recovering from his procedure, he meets Lindy Gardner, also recovering from plastic surgery.

In “Cellists,” it is perhaps the same narrator from the first story who tells the tale of Tibor, a gifted young cellist he and his friends met seven years earlier. Tibor’s personality changes once he is taken under the wing of Eloise McCormack, who claims to be a virtuoso cellist.

This is a book that explores the place of music in each character’s life, and in some cases, the character’s commitments to music or to fame. Although there is a lot going on in these ultimately sad tales, they felt unsatisfying to me in some way. I felt that some of the situations were ridiculously unlikely, as well. This is a book I read for my James Tait Black project.

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Day 1178: Do Not Say We Have Nothing

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Cover for Do Not Say We Have NothingBest of Five!
When Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was so popular, I was not a fan. I disliked how the two male college students patronized and abused the girl, even though she won through in the end. I also vaguely felt that the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution were being trivialized, even though I was not really sure about the facts. Reading Do Not Say We Have Nothing confirmed that I was right.

Marie is a young immigrant Chinese girl living in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1991. She and her mother are confused and grieved, because after the family escaped from China, her father, Jiang Kai, first deserted them to move to Hong Kong and later committed suicide.

Marie’s mother receives a call from China, from Ling, the wife of Jiang Kai’s beloved teacher, Sparrow. Ling says that her daughter, Ai-Ming, has had to leave China because of involvement in the Tiananmen Square protests, but she has missed the amnesty offered by the U.S. Ling asks that they give Ai-Ming a home.

Ai-Ming becomes an older sister to Marie. She tells her stories about her family—her great uncle, Wen the Dreamer, who courted her aunt Swirl with chapters from a forbidden book called the Book of Records; her grandparents, Big Mother Knife and Ba Lute, wandering musicians; and her father Sparrow, a composer of music. Ai-Ming tells of the days of her father, her cousin Jhuli, and Marie’s father, Jiang Kai, at the Shanghai Conservatory. Shadowing all their lives is the Cultural Revolution and its horrible excesses—murder and exile of intellectuals, forced denunciations of relatives, ransacked homes, humiliation and ruining of the innocent.

At first, I was irritated by the style of Ai-Ming’s story, which feels a little like a fairy tale, but it was not long before I was completely absorbed in it. The novel is a heart-rending tale about identity, music, love, and political destructiveness. This was another excellent book that I read for my Man Booker Prize project.

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Day 1140: Diaries 1907-1914: Prodigious Youth

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Cover for Diaries 1907-1914I am not really a diary reader. Even Samuel Pepys was boring to me. So, when my good friend recommended Sergey Prokofiev’s diairies, I wasn’t buying it. As a historian, she finds diaries a lot more enthralling than I do. In any case, she bought me the book, a whopping 800 pages long, and I made a serious attempt to read it.

Let me first say that if you enjoy reading diaries, you will probably enjoy this book a lot more than I did. Prokofiev was a prolific diarist, as is obvious when you consider that this volume only covers seven years. He also wrote very well. But in 1907, he is only sixteen years old. Although he is a prodigy in music and extremely intelligent, he is a teenager. His diaries are concerned with his triumphs in school, music, and chess; his preferences for his female schoolmates, which change daily; and his verbal scoring against his friends and instructors. All of his enthusiasms center around how well he did, how much better than others. He comes off as a competitive little jerk at worst (I wanted to use a different word) and an immature boy at best.

Half of the book covers 1913, which should be a momentous year because of Russia’s slide toward war, but I only made it to 1909. This is probably a great book for someone else, and maybe I’ll try it again later. I would have skipped a few years, but he constantly mentions people, and I was sure I wouldn’t know who half of them were if I skipped ahead.

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