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Yeah Books!

"The Rainaldi Quartet" is AKA "Sleeper".

Also, "Spring Sonata" is not that great. If you want a creepy British novel that is actually well written, try Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration". No violins, but it has singers, which I suppose is just as bad...

Also, I put "Vivaldi's Virgins" in the Chick Lit category...many descriptions of shoes, outfits, and whining, but not enough music. I was a bit disappointed.

"The Savior: A Novel" got a nice write up in the Sunday NYT this week. Oestrich interviewed Drucker, and another writer named Henry Grinberg, whose book "Variations on the Beast", is about conductors in Germany during the Nazi reign.

Also, I really enjoy your book blogs, Terez. Thanks for taking the time to pull all of this information together!

Thanks back atcha, Anne. You made some great comments/suggestions, both there and here. I have to smile at your descrip of V.'s Virgins. I really really think she should have tried harder with the violin angle. That part of the book is really lame, particularly when compared to all these wonderful books on this list. But I'll still give her good marks. (I'll be reviewing that book, as well as Savior, for an online review publication, BTW. That's how a copy of Savior landed on my lap and made me decide to leap in and read it.) Hi Terez,

maybe two other books: Last year Prix Goncourt winner Jean Echenoz published a novel about Maurice Ravel's journey to the US in 1927. A short novel (~110 pages) about a short man. The author seemed to be more fascinated about Ravel's wardrobe than his music, you read about the daily life of a weird man in the scenery of an ocean-liner, doing weird things, here and there some quotes. I'm a big Ravel-Fan - very disappointing novel, but maybe (for me) a good example, how it shouldn't be done. And maybe I'm wrong and it's great. :)

Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author (Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) will publish a book called Musicophilia, you can read and hear a short publishers preview and an interview-mp3 made for the New Yorker here. I'm a big fan of Oliver Sacks, his writings are brilliant and very clear. In "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" he describes e. g. the story of a brain-damaged named Martin, who grew up with his father, an opera-singer, who cared about him a lot until he dies. Martin knows 2.000 operas, he had a musical intelligence fully up to appreciating all the structural rules and complexities of Bach, all the intricacies of contrapuntal and fugal writing. He had the musical intelligence of a professional musician. Sacks describes how Martin tries (and fails) to be integrated in his therapeutical residential home. And how music and esp. Bach became the little world he (literally) dominated. Great writer!

O.k., it's non-fiction, but O. Sacks describes like a skillful novelist would do.

Terez - thanks for the praise. One book I would recommend that is non-fiction but a very good read and helpful in understanding what it was like to be a Jewish musician in Nazi Germany is Martin Goldsmith's "The Inextinguishable Symphony" which chronicles the experience of his parents in the Jewish Kulturbund orchestra. His father was a flutist and his mother a violist. Mischa, thanks, enjoyed reading your comments here! And many thanks for including links with your recommendations - that's really helpful. I'll go check these new ones out.

Tom, I've got that book, actually, along with the book about Alma Rose (can't find the little accent for the "e") and actually, 3 or 4 other books on the subject. My novel #3 references musicians/artists who were victims of the Holocaust and the subject is so compelling to me. But, as I'm currently revising novel #2, all that reading (actually, over a dozen related books) got shelved. But The Savior, and The Song of Names - boy, I'm glad I found the time to read those books. Both authors had a master touch in their presentation of Holocaust issues and the climate of the times. Oh, so did Nathan Shaham in The Rosendorf Quartet.

Oh, so many books, so little time...

Okay, just glanced at the publisher's review of Musophilia and it does indeed sound good! Particularly loved these lines from the review:

>"...from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music."

And this...

>"Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day."

Oh, I have SO been a victim to the "can't get the stupid, simplistic catchy tune out of my head all day" syndrome. That's one of the reasons I like classical music so much. If something's going to be stuck in my head all day, I want it to have some depth, something to analyze. Out, pop music, out!

Thanks again, Mischa!

I remember commenting here once on a book that I thought was really bad. I found it again! It's called Allegro: A Novel, by Joseph Machlis. It's available on Amazon used for one cent. :S There's sex, ballerinas, drugs, and probably other juicy stuff (I wouldn't know because I couldn't finish it). I have never been so unmoved by a piece of literature in my life. I think I'm going to check it out again, to see if it's really as bad as I remember.

But maybe it was just bad because I got it at the library the same time I got An Equal Music, and everybody knows how much I love AEM. So much seems dull in comparison.

Thank you so much for these recommendations. Music and literature both mean so much to me, and it is fascinating to me when their worlds mesh.

You know Terez, for all the music descriptions, or lack of, "Vivaldi's Virgins" could have been set anywhere...and I thought the author could have developed Vivaldi a little better. Oh well.

I haven't read "Song of Names" yet, but I will put that next on the list. Lebrecht's non-fiction is A BIT negative for my style, but since Tom has fabulous taste, I will order a copy and give it a go.

>I remember commenting here once on a book that I thought was really bad. I found it again! It's called Allegro: A Novel, by Joseph Machlis. It's available on Amazon used for one cent. :S There's sex, ballerinas, drugs, and probably other juicy stuff (I wouldn't know because I couldn't finish it). I have never been so unmoved by a piece of literature in my life. I think I'm going to check it out again, to see if it's really as bad as I remember.

Emily - ha ha! I'm going to go check it out just from this descrip alone. Sometimes it's really fun to read a book that's so bad it's entertaining (especially when you only invested a penny). Thanks for the "really bad" tip here. : )

Anne - I leafed through Norman Lebrecht's Who Killed Classical Music and can appreciate your trepidation about reading a novel from the same author, but I am happy to report that he does not bring any author intrusion into the story (well, maybe a few lines when the adult Martin muses about his family's music business and the changes through the years). I was really blown away by the artfulness of the novel, and I wasn't alone - it won the Whitbread First Novel Award.

As for VV - have you read Anita Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan? Some of my friends didn't like it, but I LOVED it. I think she's the real gem among the slew of writers who are filling the shelves with historical fiction these days (along with Tracy Chevalier). The other novels coming out (there are easily 4 or 5 right now with those dreamy Italian art covers and similar subjects) all seem to be pale copies.

I have a book to order! Thanks for the advice! (What is it with Lebrecht anyway? Maybe he has put too many lemons into his tea? "Who Killed Classical Music" is not nearly as snarky as "The Maestro Myth", but then again, I have always thought that conductors are such an easy target.) Also, you can read Lebrecht's blog on artsjournal.com.