Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The frame of Morrow's eighth novel, in which the main character searches for lost parts of a sonata, is itself like a sonata: a sonata in action that is acted out in the story. Music weaves it together. Characters intertwine, break apart, and reunite; war scatters them and the things they love. It's a complicated, parallel-time tale with multiple characters, and it details Prague's suffering during two world wars, followed by Communist rule and the Velvet Revolution. Present-day pianist Meta Taverner is given part of a sonata manuscript that she suspects is valuable. She hopes to reunite it with its other parts, separated during Hitler's vicious sweep through Prague. The plot follows Meta's search as past political upheaval, disruptive personal events, and a greedy enemy all threaten her success. These multiple story lines and historical references work well for readers familiar with twentieth-century Eastern European history, but others will need to brush up. Abrupt switches in time periods can be confusing, as (for nonmusicians) are the musical references (Mozartean but with some curious chromaticism), but, overall, this textured, style-rich historical novel should prove enjoyable for anyone who loves a symphony of words. Like Ayelet Waldman in Love & Treasure (2014) and Lauren Belfer in And After the Fire (2016), Morrow asks difficult questions about what to do with the unclaimed relics of war.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Actor Delaine opens the audiobook of Morrow's latest in an over-the-top, sultry voice reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy. Thankfully she soon settles into a more natural and pleasant voice. Meta Taverner, a young American musicologist, is given a section of an 18th-century sonata score and charged with two impossible tasks: find the other two sections of the sonata and return the complete piece to its original owner. Meta is haunted by the exquisite music, which she strongly believes to be an undiscovered work by a master composer, possibly Beethoven. Morrow evokes life in the Nazi and Communist eras of 20th-century Czechoslovakia and explains the characteristics of various musical forms as they arise in the story. Delaine has trouble with various character accents: while Meta's new love interest and several elderly Czech men and women are quite believable, some of the other Czechs, like the villains trying to steal the manuscript, and Americans, among them the heroine's generous friends, scratch the ear. But overall Delaine keeps listeners attuned to this well-wrought novel. A Grove hardcover. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1939 Prague, as the grasping Germans sweep in, Otylie Barosová protects a musical score her father cherished by splitting it into three parts. Decades later, an elderly Czech immigrant gives New York-based musicologist Meta Taverner the yellowed pages of an entrancing but incomplete sonata that has the sound of an authentic 18th-century work. Is it by C.P.E. Bach? Mozart? A lesser composer demonstrating sudden genius? A burningly eager Meta sets off to Prague in search of the missing movements and the score's original owner. She's leaving behind a somewhat unsympathetic boyfriend yet heading toward adventure and revelation, as she's helped by a genial concert pianist manqué recommended by her mentor and a Czech American journalist as interested in her as he is in her story. She also encounters those who want the piece for themselves, which adds some suspense as Meta tries, literally, to put all the pieces together. In the pileup of coincidence and details, the language occasionally goes flat, but the narrative moves satisfyingly to the ending you'll know you want. VERDICT A big, fun, page-turning rush of a novel, with Bard professor Morrow (The Forgers) writing wonderfully about music (Meta isn't just a classicist but a metalhead, too). [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A musical mystery set against the backdrop of a nation shattered by war and loss.How many piano sonatas did Ludwig van Beethoven write? A music student might be quick to say 32but that disallows the possibility that there's one hidden somewhere or one by Mozart or Haydn that no one has ever seen before. That's the conceit that Morrow (The Forgers, 2014, etc.) spins with this sonically rich novel, in which a Czech woman, Otylie Bartoov, only steps ahead of the German invaders in 1939, divides her inheritance among family and friendsnamely, an anonymous Classical-era score given to her by her father and now split up into three, rendering it essentially without value to the avaricious Nazis. On immigrating to America, Otylie loses sight and hope of the treasurepart of which resurfaces years later in contemporary New York, beguiling a musicologist named Meta Taverner, who "knew it was impossible she had stumbled on another Beethoven Werk ohne Opuszahl in deepest, darkest Queens" but presses on, having now found a new source of meaning in a life burdened with quiet tragedies. She goes to Prague, seeking clues. Morrow delights in local color, in the "home of the Golem and crazy Rudolf's equally crazy alchemists, not to mention Kafka's bug," though he works in an intriguing counterintuition: who's to say that the manuscript isn't in Prague, Texas, or Prague, Nebraska? The story, which runs a touch too long, takes a conventional whodunit twist with the introduction of a competing musicologist who wants the glory (and money) for himself even as Meta hits walls that induce a crisis of confidence in her abilitiesand therein lies something of a leitmotiv. Yet, with the help of a dogged journalist and other allies, Meta works her way toward a hard-won resolution. As she says, "Sometimes in life what's broken can't be put back together," to which Otylie replies, "Or maybe it was never truly broken at all." An elegant foray into music and memory. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
