Stradi’s Violin
by Blenda Bligh
Publish America
1-4241-9460-1
Copyright 2007
Paperback, 295 pages, $24.95

This novel spans many years and involves many characters. At its center, it’s the story of Ellen Gibson, a beautiful woman who is propelled to make the biggest mistake of her life–or so it seems–in the name of motherly love.

At the beginning of the story, during the Great Depression, Ellen finds herself cornered. Not only is she pregnant, but her husband has left her with two young children to support, there’s no food left, and the rent for her shack is three weeks overdue. To make matters worse, she’s fired from her job at a hat shop because of a rich, arrogant lady named Amanda McGowan.

A little after she’s fired, the rich lady pays her a strange visit… and it is then that Ellen receives the shocking proposal, a proposal Ellen must not turn down for her own sake as that of her children. Ellen’s decision has major consequences and affects the lives of various characters later in the story.

As the years pass, the reader follows Ellen’s and Amanda’s lives and their family relationships as well as their secret connection to one another. No women could be more opposite. While Ellen is the embodiment of kindness and resignation, Amanda is the perfect example of selfishness and greed. Later on, the plot revolves around their children as they grow to young adults and eventually become romantically involved.

Though the novel has a good premise, and the author has an enthusiasm for writing that comes through the pages, I found the novel disappointing because of several reasons.

The characters of Ellen and Amanda are stereotypical to the point of being cartoonish. No one can be so good or so evil. So in this sense, I found no complexity in the characters. Even a villain must have human characteristics at times. I also don’t understand why the author chose to make Amanda deaf, as this particular trait doesn’t play any kind of role in the plot. I kept waiting for the moment when her deafness would become somehow significant in the story, but the moment never came.

As for Ellen, all I can say is that Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind , in all her incredible goodness, at least was smart. But Ellen is so unbelievably good she falls in the ‘dumb’ category. A protagonist who is good must have character and substance to accompany this goodness.

Another aspect of the novel that broke my suspension of disbelief is that the author chooses to tell big chunks of the story instead of showing them with action and dialogue. Because of this, the novel reads like a synopsis at times. I feel the book would have been improved if the author had taken the time to flesh out these segments instead of simply relating what one character says to another without using active dialogue.

Furthermore, many of the character confrontations, especially toward the end of the book, read like a script from a soap opera–tilted and predictable, and there are abrupt switches of point of view in the same page without a double space between the paragraphs, so you find yourself suddenly realizing that you’re in another character’s mind and in a completely different setting. This was very annoying.

Finally–and this is by far the most disappointing aspect of the book–the author obviously failed to do any research about violin playing and violinists. For instance, she puts the young violinist in the story, only five years old, playing a full-size Stradivarious. The way this character is described when playing the violin is superficial and doesn’t ring true. There is no ‘feeling’ in these descriptions, those musical feelings so well described by musicians who write fiction or at least by those non-musician authors who conduct research before setting to write this type of scene.

And last, the cover of the book and the title are misleading. The novel has nothing to do with violins or violinists. Only that one secondary character mentioned is a child violinist, but violin music doesn’t play a role in the story.

In sum, Stradi’s Violin reads like a first draft and has too many technical problems for me to recommend it. Bligh’s writing flows very nicely at times and, as I said, her love for storytelling comes through. Unfortunately, these things aren’t enough to publish a book. What this novel needs is a good professional editor.

Reviewed by Mayra Calvani

The Savior
By Eugene Drucker
Simon and Schuster
July 2007
208 pages
$23.00

Reviewed by Terez Rose

Eugene Drucker, violinist and founding member of the acclaimed Emerson Quartet, takes a heavy subject—the Holocaust—and uses his musician’s sensibilities to produce a searing, unforgettable pitch-perfect story. Gottfried Keller is a German violinist, languishing in the troubled, waning days of World War II. Unable to fight for Germany due to a weak heart, he has been conscripted into performing for convalescing soldiers in hospitals. One morning, however, he is picked up by the SS and delivered to a labor camp outside town. There, the cultured yet depraved Kommandant instructs him to present four concerts as part of an experiment: can classical music revive the spirits of a select group of nearly-dead concentration camp victims?

Keller has seen the smokestacks of the compound’s windowless brick buildings, belching out acrid smoke. “Rubber-making factory,” he and his neighbors have been told. He now sees the camp’s grey-faced, skeletal workers shuffling in the distance. Reluctantly he agrees to the Kommandant’s plan, well aware that he has few alternatives.

Drucker’s passages of describing music are nothing short of exquisite—he offers the detail and insight of a musicologist with the appealing brevity and clarity of an artist mindful of his audience. Keller first performs Paganini’s Caprice Number Nine in E Major, a virtuoso masterpiece.

“The lighthearted opening theme of the Ninth alternates with more dramatic sections in minor keys. There are fistfuls of chords, rapid scales in the high register and a passage of ricochet, a special technique in which the bow is thrown onto the string to produce a series of rebounding notes.”

Keller’s performance, however, is met with an unexpected response. There is only a grim, absolute silence until the Kommandant shouts at the inmates to clap. As the guards press closer with their guns, they begin to clap mechanically, and then won’t stop.

“He got ready to play [again], but their hands still came together with grim regularity as they stared straight ahead. He brought down his violin and looked around, not knowing what to do. Finally a guard stamped his foot, just once, and there was silence.”

Images like these—eerie and psychologically complex—are what keep this novel from being “just another Holocaust story.” The subtlety of it, the simplicity and freshness of the images are much like the music of Bach and Mozart—deceptively simple to the untrained ear, but revealing layer upon layer of complexity to those who choose to dig further.

The story is peppered with flashbacks to Keller’s days as a music student at Cologne’s prestigious Hochschule, and his relationship with fellow students Ernst (based on his own father who emigrated to the U.S. in 193 and Marietta, both of whom are Jewish and must soon flee the country in the wake of growing persecution.

Keller’s final student days in 1935, including his developing closeness and romantic interest in Marietta, are lyrical and bittersweet. There is no easy solution for the two lovers—she begs him to audition for a newfound orchestra bound for Palestine, but his Aryan status works against him here. One solution, proposed by Marietta, is to find him forged papers that would state he was a Jew. A dangerous plan in 1935 Nazi Germany for a musician who wants to avoid trouble and simply play his music in his homeland. The reader doesn’t know whether to cheer the spirited Marietta on or to hastily push her out the door and lock it.

The novel, like life, has irony, not least of which is its title. Keller plays his music in an attempt to save both himself and his dispirited audience, which include Grete, a woman he briefly befriends. Not all his listeners, however want to be saved. Some deeply resent this attempted return of beauty and culture to their lives; they recognize the trick being played on them.

Irony appears again in Rudi, an SS camp guard, who, surprisingly, reveres classical music and Bach as deeply as Keller. The two engage in a spirited discussion over Bach’s “Saint Matthew’s Passion,” specifically the violin solo that depicts Judas trying to reject his earned thirty silver pieces. Rudi’s ambivalence over his own role is clear, particularly when he declares Judas “was just the pawn of larger forces.”

Keller cannot remain blind to what is happening, particularly after he discovers a warehouse holding thousands of pairs of shoes. “Men’s, women’s children’s. Mostly simple walking shoes, but also a sprinkling of sandals, heavy boots and house slippers. Some were in good condition, but most of them were dried out, dusty, weather-beaten, shapeless, a mute chorus of gaping mouths.” But Keller’s only choice is to continue performing, concluding with a searing rendition of Bach’s masterpiece, the Chaconne from his Partita in D Minor, with unexpected and devastating consequences for both him and his audience.

Drucker has not written a sentimental, moralistic tale. Gottfried Keller is neither perpetrator, victim, hero or dissident. He is an average German citizen, slow—or perhaps unwilling—to comprehend the full extent of the atrocities being committed, and the story’s pacing reflects this. What starts as a gently melancholy read culminates in a violent, disturbing climax (perhaps a bit too heavy-handed for such an otherwise subtly-rendered novel). Here, then, is a thought-provoking exploration of conscience, a bittersweet take on a culture that gave us both Hitler and Bach. A powerful story, a must-read for classical music and arts enthusiasts.

–Terez Rose’s stories and essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Literary Mama, Espresso Fiction, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and various anthologies. She has reviewed book for Mid-American Review, Peace Corps Writers, Midwest Book Review and MostlyFiction.com. An adult beginner on the violin, she maintains a violin-related blog at http://www.violinist.com/blog/terez. Visit her at www.terezrose.com.

Vivaldi’s Virgins
By Barbara Quick
HarperCollins
July 2007
304 pages
$24.95

Reviewed by Terez Rose

In the early eighteenth century, Venice was a bustling, exotic city-state, thriving with trade and art, with no less than four public institutions for the housing and upkeep of the city’s less favored population. The Ospdale della Pietà, an orphanage of sorts for foundling and unwanted children, is the setting, then, for Barbara Quick’s Vivaldi’s Virgins. Anna Maria dal Violin—orphans are given a last name according to their instrument of skill—is plucked from the commun at an early age to join the figlie di coro, an elite group of performers under the direction of maestro Antonio Vivaldi, nicknamed the “Red Priest” for the color of his hair and the vocation he neglects in favor of composing. The virgins in question are his all-female musicians, cloistered within the Pietà’s walls, obscured from public view even when performing.

The story is less about Vivaldi and the violin, however, and more about an adolescent’s search for self, for clues about the mother she never knew. Encouraged by Sister Laura, a cloistered nun and friend, to write letters to this absent mother, Anna Maria pours her questions, thoughts and hopes into missives that punctuate the story and set its poignant tone.

There is a lot to like here: the writing is elegant and flows well; descriptions of Venetian society are detailed and evocative. Music is presented in a light, poetic fashion that will please readers whose classical music tastes run along the lines of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”

Anna Maria, based on a real life violin virtuoso to whom Vivaldi dedicated thirty-seven compositions, is a spirited sort. Sneaking out with a friend to attend an opera; secreted by Vivaldi to a nobleman’s masked ball at his palazzo; escaping to attend a celebration in the Jewish Ghetto—these events bring adventure to her life, but continually land her in trouble. Her ensuing punishments demonstrate well the confining nature of life within the Pietà’s walls and the institutionalized element that defines Anna Maria’s world.

During one such punishment, Anna Maria comments in a letter to her mother that “I’ve come to believe that music is the one companion, the one teacher, the one parent, the one friend who will never abandon me.” In musings such as these, Quick has aptly captured the saving grace of music that serves as a religion of sorts for many of us. For the violin-savvy reader seeking insight into the life and mind of a virtuoso, however, this story dishes up thin fare. We’re told Anna Maria is a violin prodigy, how she works hard in trying to memorize and play Vivaldi’s challenging music. We hear that the coro “played very well,” and that “I played for my teacher, just as skillfully, just as beautifully, as I was able.” But what we’re missing are the details.

An aside here, if I might. The violin is not the piano—you don’t just learn notes, plunk them out with the keys and then spend the rest of the time practicing till the music flows smoothly from your finger. Fretless instruments allow infinite opportunities to subtly vary intonation—both a challenge and an opportunity violinists can spend their entire lives trying to master, necessitating hours of daily scales, arpeggios and etudes before passage work can even begin. A violinist’s relationship with this temperamental instrument is intense and enduring—both the violinist’s best friend and her harshest taskmaster. No player is unaffected by the beauty of the instrument, its glowing surface and shape, much like the body of a woman—surely of note to the lonely, motherless Anna Maria. Greater description and detail here, along these lines, would have gone a long way indeed.

What the reader does get are Anna Maria’s feelings when playing, which are lyrically, if vaguely expressed. “The first movements went beautifully well, with notes yielding, sweetening as my fingers found their hiding places and called them into the air. They followed my bow as if I were the leader of a great army of musician warriors: I made them sing.”

Singing, and the broader subject of music in general, is where Quick seems to hone in more successfully on description. One wonderfully depicted event that demonstrates both music and the ribald pageantry of Venice takes place inside the Teatro Sant’ Angelo, which Anna Maria’s friend has dragged her out to attend. There, they encounter both nobility and working class alike, in silks and rain-soaked woolens respectively, all faces covered by the masks Venetians favored in public during the long season of Carnival. The two girls take seats and observe, gape-mouthed, as the drama plays out, both onstage and off—high entertainment for the reader as well.

Later, the ensuing nighttime gondola ride back to the Pietà allows Anna Maria to revel at more natural wonders: “The sky on a clear night is a living, pulsating thing. The stars are like musical notes turned to light, and, like notes, they shimmer and swell and fade and fall.”

Like these stars, Vivaldi’s Virgins has a vivid, affecting trajectory, swelling perhaps a bit too early, but subsiding elegantly to produce a satisfying, heart-warming read. Recommended for fans of Anita Dunant’s In the Company of the Courtesan who seek a milder, more sentimental touch, with a dollop of classical music thrown in for sweetness.

-Terez Rose’s stories and essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Literary Mama, Espresso Fiction, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and various anthologies. She has reviewed book for Mid-American Review, Peace Corps Writers, Midwest Book Review and MostlyFiction.com. An adult beginner on the violin, she maintains a violin-related blog at http://www.violinist.com/blog/terez. Visit her at www.terezrose.com.

If you can come up, eloquently enough, with ten reasons why you love your violin (or viola), you may be eligible to win a Bobelock music carrier.

The contest, sponsored by SunMusicStrings, is open to people of all ages and skill levels.

For full details, please visit the following links:

ESSAY CONTEST
http://beststudentviolins.com/Contest.html

Good luck!

Mayra

Today on Violin and Books is talented author Kristy Kiernan, whose first novel, CATCHING GENIUS, has garnered some stunning reviews. Kristy talks about inspiration, music, her working habits, finding a publisher, and her other works. At the end of the interview is a review of CATCHING GENIUS by author/violinist Terez Rose.

Please tell us about your book, Catching Genius. What was your inspiration for this story and what prompted you to make the protagonist an amateur violinist?

Catching Genius is about sisters; Estella was diagnosed as a genius at seven, and Connie, five at the time, became a violinist in an effort to draw her father’s attention back to her. Now in their forties, the sisters must come together and work things out, which is made harder by the facts that they’re both hiding the reality of the current lives from each other and that Connie’s youngest son, Carson, seems to have inherited some genius of his own.

Connie being a violinist was a decision made right at the beginning of my brainstorming. I have always yearned to be able to play the violin, but in many ways, the yearning itself was enough. Sort of like a crush on a movie star, I felt that the fantasy of it was likely more exciting and mysterious (for me) than the reality. I knew that even to become proficient a player must put in hours of work every day, and that sort of passion in my life was reserved for writing. I’ve never been good at multi-tasking when it came to creative energy, so this was a great way for me to explore that other fantasy life I occasionally indulged myself in, in the medium I chose to express myself in.

Sneaky way to live your dreams, huh?

Tell us about the writing process while working on this novel. How much time passed from the actual idea to the published book? Did you get caught up at times or did it flow evenly from start to finish?

Hahahahaha…ahhhh, sorry, it was that whole “flow evenly” bit that got me! From actual idea to published book? Five, six years maybe? But keep in mind, that an actual idea might fester for years before it becomes impossible to ignore, and that the publishing process itself (selling, editing, proofing, typesetting, production, distribution) often takes over a year. This book, from first word on the page to selling to a publishing house took two years.

And yes, I absolutely got “caught up.” I got caught up in the research for months at a time, for both the math aspects as well as the music aspects. Perhaps an eighth of what I learned during that time is in the novel. Maybe a sixteenth. At one point I was sitting in bed at three in the afternoon, still in my pajamas, hair wild, surrounded by open books on Tesla, math theory, and the nature of genius, and watching “Pi” a black & white movie about numerology, Jewish mysticism, and the stock market, and I realized that I thought I might be on the verge of decoding the secret of the universe.

Yeah.

That was when I knew it was time to put the research away and finish the book!

From violin-related novels I’ve read, I know it’s very difficult for a non-violin player to write effectively about the violinist’s ’soul’. What type of research did you have to do in order to get into the mind, heart and soul of a violinist, and to get all the details right?

You and your readers might find this horribly egotistical, but hear me out first: I didn’t find the violinist’s soul at all difficult to write effectively about. I would find it incredibly difficult to write effectively about the soul of someone who wasn’t deeply invested in the creative process. Don’t you, as a violinist, feel connected to others who make their living (financially or emotionally) in a creative field?

Our disciplines might be different, but I can’t help but feel that our passions are the same. We want to get lost in the beauty of what stirs us, we strive to perfect it to the best of our ability, even when we know perfection is an illusion, and we come back to it, over and over, even when our imperfection breaks our hearts.

What is your working environment like? Do you write in longhand or at the computer? Are you disciplined?

My hand cramps even when I just sit down to write out bills! No, no longhand for me. I love the computer, I love the decisive sound of the keyboard. I started out on computers fairly early, in the eighties, so it’s a very natural thing for me. My working environment, aside from a keyboard, is pretty fluid. I work on a laptop, so at any given moment I am working on my sofa (as I am right now, two throw pillows behind me, legs up, TV on, glass of chardonnay on the coffee table), or I could be in bed, on the patio (I live in Florida, so I can work outside most of the year), in a hotel room, on a plane, etc…

I am disciplined when I need to be. I tend to take discipline in doses. Deadline? No problem, never missed one. Lots of time? Well, then I’m a daydreamer. I think a lot before I sit down and do the thing. When I know it’s time, I set a daily word count goal rather than a time limit, usually 2,000 words a day, and then I am militant about it. I swear my husband has to call to remind me to eat.

Some authors walk for inspiration, others keep daily journals or listen to music. What helps you to unleash your creativity?

Music is huge for me. Most often rock, heavy rock. AC/DC inspires me, as does Eminem and Metallica. The I have my Van Morrison and Peter Gabriel times, and my dear friend Terez Rose, a violinist and an extraordinary writer in her own right, made me the most exquisite classical CDs that I put in when I’m need another mindset. I find that my musical tastes change with what type of scene I’m writing or what stage I’m at in the book.

If I’m stuck, thinking too much about the business end, or growing despondent about my abilities it’s: Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel, Lose Yourself by Eminem, You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC, Here I Am (Come and Take Me) by Al Green, Rosalita by Bruce Springsteen, I Feel The Earth Move by Carole King, Wooden Ships by CSNY, The Cover of the Rolling Stone by Dr. Hook…yikes, there’s a lot of them. Maybe I should do a whole article on the angry music of determination?

Anyway, different music for different parts of the book, the different stages of the process.

The competition is tough in the publishing world, and a lot of new authors have tremendous trouble finding an agent or publisher. How was this process for you?

Tough. I found an agent on my second book. I didn’t know anyone, didn’t have any contacts, just did it the old fashioned way by sending out a single-paged query letter explaining what my book was about to agents and hoping for a reply.

We (my agent and I) didn’t find a publisher until my fourth book, which was Catching Genius. From the first word on my first book, to holding the published version of Catching Genius in my hand was seven years.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever got?

The best business advice I got was from Pat Conroy. He encouraged me to help others, which I was already doing, but then he cautioned me that helping others couldn’t come at the expense of my own writing. I spend a lot of time encouraging other writers, especially debut authors, but I try to remember that if I take too much time away from my own work, I won’t have any wisdom to impart to them. It’s a difficult balancing act, and I’ve had some tough times working it out.

The best advice about the craft came from my husband. He told me to stop worrying about what his mother would think when she read it.

Would you like to tell our readers about your other novels?

Well, I don’t know why I wouldn’t and thanks for the opportunity! My next novel is called Matters of Faith and it’s coming out August 5, 2008. It’s about a dysfunctional Florida family (seeing a trend here?), and here’s the description from the back of the book:

Kristy Kiernan made a stunning debut with Catching Genius, her compelling depiction of two sisters facing their mutual past. Now she explores the life of a boy whose search for faith threatens to drive his family apart.

At age twelve, Marshall Tobias saw his best friend killed by a train. It was then that he began his search for faith; delving into one tradition, then discarding it for another. While his parents were at odds over his behavior, they found common ground with his little sister Meghan, whose severe food allergies required careful attention.

Now Marshall is home from college with his first real girlfriend. Meghan is thrilled to have her around, but there is more to Ada than meets the eye—including her beliefs about the evils of medical intervention. What follows is a crisis that tests not only faith, but the limits of family, forgiveness, and our need to believe.

The only music in this one is the daughter, Meghan, is a pianist, and her concentration takes a different turn toward the end of the book, but it’s not a main theme. However, I can’t imagine any book I write not having music, ion one way or another, in it. It’s too important to me, always has been from the time I was a small child, just like writing.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about you or your work?

Buy it or I can’t keep doing it? *sigh* Sad, isn’t it? No, I suppose there comes a point where you have to let the work speak for itself. I hope people enjoy it. I never wanted to write a book, I just always wanted to be a writer. I imagine it must be like being a musician. Do you want to play just one piece? Or do you want to immerse yourself in the music itself, do you want to surround yourself with music, glean what you can from other musicians, talk music, breathe music? That’s how I feel about writing. It’s not The Book, it’s every book, every story, every character.

Is there any violin-related book (fiction and/or nonfiction) that you’ve read and would like to recommend?

Wow, I wouldn’t want to presume to tell a musician what to read, as I imagine a musician might be loathe to tell me what to read about writing, so I’ll just tell you what I did read, and what I enjoyed: 1) The first, the obvious, An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, lovely 2) The Savior by Eugene Drucker 3) The Rosendorf Quartet by Nathan Shaham. There were more, many more, both fiction and non-fiction, but those are the ones that stand out.

Hey, thanks so much, Mayra! I enjoyed this, several questions I’ve not been asked before!

I’m glad you did, Kristy. Thank YOU for taking the time to answer my questions!

Interview by Mayra Calvani, author of The Magic Violin.

**************

Short review of Catching Genius
by Terez Rose

“I’m sick. I might die,” seven-year-old Estella confesses her younger sister Connie, in the prologue of Kristy Kiernan’s debut novel. “I have eyecue. It’s bad. I have a lot of it.” When Connie rushes to her beloved sister and friend, Estella holds up her hand. “Don’t. It might be catching.” And thus begins Catching Genius, the irresistible story of two sisters whose relationship and lives are irrevocably altered after one is diagnosed as a math genius.

Fast-forward thirty-five years. The sisters, who haven’t spoken for eight years, must meet, as per their mother’s request, to pack up the family’s Gulf Coast home and ready it for sale. Both sisters are reluctant—their lives have taken divergent paths and Connie still harbors resentment over the way Estella and her genius “stole” their father’s attention and affection. Connie’s youthful attempts to regain her father’s attention by playing the violin—which she learned to do with great proficiency but never brilliance—fell short, relegating her to the sidelines throughout her youth.

The two sisters, now pressed into each other’s company, must address the memories and contentious issues that separate them, as well as dealing with new issues springing up. Estella, currently a math tutor, suffers from a mysterious malady. Connie is struggling with her husband’s infidelity and the challenges of raising two boys. Her teenaged son, an increasingly hostile stranger, is failing math, of all subjects. Carson, her youngest, has been listening to the music Connie still plays and performs, absorbing it and creating his own. When Carson’s music teacher raves about the boy’s prodigious talent—both as a clarinetist and a composer—Connie, well aware of the havoc such a diagnosis can wreak on a family, reacts violently, rejecting both teacher and his words.

Kiernan writes about family, forgiveness and the allure of the Gulf Coast with authority and assurance, producing a smoothly plotted story peppered with revelations that lead to a rousing, heartfelt finish. Alternating points of view between the sisters help the reader understanding the key issues of contention and misunderstanding. Connie’s troubled relationship with husband Luke is brilliantly depicted—complex and achingly real. Likewise, Connie’s mother is well portrayed as a firm but loving matriarch who’s lively, outspoken, and reacts to her daughters in a way that is never clichéd or overdone.

Humor punctuates the story nicely, lending levity to tense moments, such as the scene where Connie speaks with a lawyer over the phone regarding her husband. She stands surrounded by the orchids that Luke enjoys presenting to her, always first “running his fingers along the lips, caressing the throat, gazing at me slyly.” Upon hearing the details of his financial irresponsibility, however, Connie tears up the entire orchid collection, in a Hitchcock-esque frenzy, that afterwards leaves her staring at the petaled carnage. “All around me plants lay unrecognizable, a battlefield of awful dismembered limbs. My fury settled into something approaching satisfaction when I realized that at least I no longer saw sex when I looked at the orchids.”Estella’s method of narrating—short musings that are focused, economic, almost geometric in their precision, offers the reader fascinating glimpses into the mind of a gifted mathematician. She experiences and processes life through the filter of her numbers, a trait Kiernan depicts brilliantly.

I walk back down the stairs. Passive-aggressively. Purposely hitting every squeak I know—there are six of them.
Three facts about six:
Six is the first perfect number.
All numbers between twin primes are evenly divisible by six.
Six is the product of the first four nonzero Fibonacci numbers.

I reach the tile, step carefully to the center of each one. Every third one, I skip one to the right—forty-three in all.
Three facts about forty-three:
There are forty-three three-digit emirps.
Forty-three is the smallest prime that is not the sum of two palindromes.
There are forty-three verses in Beowulf.

This kind of writing is what makes Catching Genius rise above the pack in the crowded women’s fiction market. Clearly meticulous research was required, but the novel never suffers from an excess of academic explanation or mathematics jargon. Kiernan’s successful melding of math and lyrical prose lends the novel invisible depths that provide an intellectual as well as emotional charge to the novel.

Kiernan’s description of Connie, as a violin player, offers an equal amount of insider information about playing the violin—the hickey on the neck, the clipped fingernails, the frustrations of tuning a recalcitrant violin and the sacred nature of a good bow and its hair. Scenes between her and the trio members she performs with are true to life. Connie, however, falls short of demonstrating the intensity that turns a violin player into a violinist. And yet this flaw is perfectly in line with the story. Connie admits she isn’t the most dedicated violin player, and is never to be found immersing herself in the hours-long daily task of scales, études and arpeggios that most violinists see as mandatory. She leaves her violin behind in the car (violinists, cover your ears: in Atlanta, in the summer). Playing the violin is a diversion for her, not a calling. Her son Carson, however, it becomes clear, lives to play music, to experiment with music, to find music in everything. He can’t not play music. He is indeed the music prodigy in the family, an irony that affects Connie on many levels.

The story might have profited from a flashback scene that would have “showed not told” Dad’s rejection of Connie in favor of Estella and her gift, but aside from this, it is well-balanced and focused. Chosen as an Ingram Reading Group Selection for February, Catching Genius is a novel that will appeal to music and math enthusiasts, women’s fiction readers, and anyone who wants to escape for a few hours, pull up a beach chair, smell the sea and enjoy a good story.

-Terez Rose’s stories and essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Literary Mama, Espresso Fiction, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and various anthologies. She has reviewed book for Mid-American Review, Peace Corps Writers, Midwest Book Review and MostlyFiction.com. An adult beginner on the violin, she maintains a violin-related blog at http://www.violinist.com/blog/terez. Visit her at www.terezrose.com.

It’s been a while since my last post. Let’s just say the holidays were incredibly hectic!

I did have the time to read two violin-related books, though:

Stradi’s Violin, by Blenda Bligh, which I will be reviewing within the next few days, and Violin Playing: A Physiological Approach, by Isaak A. Vigdorchik (I know, not fiction, but I found it in Goodwill over the summer and couldn’t resist!). This book seems to be out of print and is not available on Amazon, but it’s available via Amazon’s ‘other sellers’.

At the moment I’m waiting in the mail for Vivaldi’s Virgins, which promises to be a great read, plus I just ordered these three titles from Owlsbooks (via Amazon’s ‘other sellers’):

1 “Frost the Fiddler“
Janice Weber; Mass Market Paperback; $0.32

Sold by: owlsbooks
1 “Ninas Waltz“
Corinne Demas; Hardcover; $0.97

Sold by: owlsbooks
1 “The Heart Of The Wood“
Marguerite W. Davol; Hardcover; $2.30

These will keep me busy for a while

If you’ve read a good violin-related book lately that it’s not in my lists, let me know so I can add it.

Happy New Year to all!

Mayra

Hello everybody,

First of all, I would like to say THANK YOU to all the people who made The Magic Violin virtual book tour a success!

Thank you to all the nice people who took time out of their busy lives to host my tour and leave comments on my tour stops. I really appreciate it! Some people commented on every stop–really, I’m so very grateful and wish I could send you all gifts!

And now, the winner of the $20 Amazon gift certificate is………………….

lisalmg !!!!!!!!

Have a WONDERFUL Christmas, everybody!

Mayra

Corinne Demas has written many books in a variety of genres. A violinist herself, music has influenced her work. She is a Professor of English at Holyoke College and Fiction Editor of The Massachussets Review.  

Welcome to Violin and Books, Corinne. Let's start by talking a little about your violin-related children's book, Nina's Waltz. What is it about and what was your inspiration for this story?

School Library Journal—in a wonderfully insightful review, called Nina’s Waltz “A hymn to the transforming power of music,” and it’s a perfect description of what I hoped to do in the book.

Nina’s dad, Nick, writes her a fiddle tune as a birthday gift “a tune that would get inside you without you realizing it—the kind of tune you’d find yourself humming when you walked along a country road on a star-filled night.” They head off to a fiddle contest together, where Nick plans to play the waltz and win the prize money, which the family desperately needs. But he gets stung by wasps and can’t play. Nina is terrified of performing in front of an audience, but she gets up on stage to play the tune in his place.

I wanted to write about a father who couldn’t afford to buy his daughter an expensive present for her birthday, but gives her something of far greater value. What better gift that music? Nina’s gift to her father is that she overcomes stage fright so “Nina’s Waltz” can be heard.

When did you start playing the violin? Do you still play?

I started playing the violin when I was in elementary school, and have been playing—on and off–ever since. I started taking lessons again when I began teaching at Mount Holyoke College and heard Professor Linda Laderach play Bach in a recital. She kindly took me on as a pupil. (All my bad techniques had years to solidify.) When my daughter started Suzuki violin at age four I went through the course of music with her. She’s now a far better violinist than I could ever hope to be.

What is it about the violin that is so alluring and mysterious when you compare it to other instruments?
I had started taking piano lessons when I was child, and began the violin later. In my memoir, Eleven Stories High: Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948—1968, I describe the difference between the two : the violin was “an instrument,” the piano “seemed more like a piece of furniture.” With a violin “you had to create the notes. At the piano you simply pushed down the keys. I loved the violin, the way the wood curved and the grain rippled in the light, the S holes that let me peer into the secret depths.”

Have you written any other violin/music related books?

That’s an interesting question. As I look over the books I’ve written I see that music plays a part more often than I’d realized.

Two Christmas Mice is a picture book about two lonely mice who discover they are neighbors on Christmas Eve when Annamouse plays “Silent Night” on her violin, and Willamouse, hears her playing through the wall (“Only a mouse could play that well.&rdquo Both mice claim “Mouzart” as their favorite composer, and Santamouse brings Annamouse a silver violin charm. Stephanie Roth illustrated this story and her violin-playing mouse is adorable.

In my memoir, Eleven Stories High: Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948—1968, there’s a whole chapter called “Music,” and music is a theme in a number of my short stories in both my collections. “Lifelines” in Daffodils or the Death of Love is about a woman who takes up the violin as an adult. “Ears” in What We Save for Last, is about a woman who is a page-turner, and travels with her violinist lover, turning pages for his accompanist when they are on stage. “Memorial Day,” in the same collection, is about a divorced couple who are together when their daughter plays her trumpet with her school band.
In my picture book The Boy Who Was Generous With Salt the characters sing sea shanties (The music for “Cape Cod Girls” is in the back of the book.) The Title of my YA novel If Ever I Return Again comes from the refrain of a sea shanty that is sung during the story. In Hurricane! the Daddy in the story plays his harmonica to comfort the little girl during the storm.

Do you listen music while writing? If yes, what is your favorite 'writing' music? Any composers or pieces that you find particularly inspirational?

I don’t listen while I’m working at my desk, but I do listen while I swim laps at the pool and work on ideas in my head. My son gave me an amazing little player that works under water. I’m currently doing the crawl and the backstroke to Beethoven symphonies.

I understand Nina's Waltz includes violin music which was played by your daughter. How did this come about? Was it your idea or your publisher's?

The tune was composed for the book by my cousin, Alex Demas, a fiddler, and the editor decided to include the music is in the front of the book, so anyone can play it. I wanted everyone who read the book to be able to hear the tune, even if they couldn’t read music, so I had the idea of making it available on my website. My daughter, who was around the same age as Nina in the story at the time, plays the waltz.

Where is the book available?

Unfortunately the publisher let it go out of print, so people have to find it on the internet. I’ve bought some copies there myself!

Do you enjoy reading violin-related fiction? Any title you'd recommend?

Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata”

Do you have a website where readers may learn more about you and your work?

Yes! http://corinnedemas.com

Is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers?

Wishes for a music-filled holiday season!

Dear Book and Violin Lovers,

To promote the release of my Christmas picture book, The Magic Violin, I’m going on a virtual book tour during the month of December. The tour will begin on December the 1st and end on December 25th, when I’ll be giving away a $20 Amazon certificate to one lucky winner!

To be eligible, all you need to do is leave a comment under this post or on one of my tour stops–that’s all there is to it! You don’t need to leave a comment on all the tour stops, but the more comments you leave, the higher your chances of winning.

The winner will be announced here on this blog on Christmas Day.

This will be my virtual book tour schedule:

December 1 - Interview at Shari Soffe’s blog, Out of My Mind
December 2 - Review of The Magic Violin at YABooksCentral
December 4 - Interview at American Chronicle
December 5 - review of The Magic Violin at Reviews and Other Stuff
December 6 - Short essay on the author/illustrator relationship at Cachibachis
December 8 - Review of The Magic Violin at Muse Book Reviews
December 10 – Interview at Sue Eves’ blog
December 11 - Interview at Cynthia’s Attic
December 12 - Review of The Magic Violin at Armchair Interviews
December 13 - Interview and review at Beverly McClure’s blog
December 15 - Short essay on violin and inspiration at Blogcritics Magazine
December 17 – Interview at Kim Baccellia’s blog
December 22 - Review of The Magic Violin by Kim Baccellia

*I’ll be updating daily in case of changes.

Tell us about your book, Stradi’s Violin. What was your inspiration for this story?

It started when a friend told me this incredible story of a deaf relative that played the violin in the symphony. She brought me pictures from the newspaper showing her great-aunt with her violin and the story was validated. My interest was piqued, and at the time I was reading a little history about the Great Depression. Inspired by what I was reading, and the story of my friend’s relative, I begin to write. The characters came to vivid life little by little in snippets of time; I wrote in between my busy family life and my administrative office job.

Do you play the violin?

Sadly, I do not play any instrument, but I am a great admirer of those who do.

What was it about the violin that inspired you–why not some other instrument?

Well, as I said before it was the story my friend told me, and since the violin was the instrument, I stayed with it. Besides it is a beautiful, soulful instrument that stirs passions!

Did you have to do a lot of research about music and violin playing in order to write this novel? What sources did you use?

I did read a lot about the great violinmaker Stradivarius. I felt that the violin in my story should be very special, and what better than one made by the genius himself? I read about his violins, and others using resources on the Internet.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, who’s your favorite composer?

I don’t normally listen to music while I write – I am too busy thinking about the character, and what he or she would say or do. I tend to loose myself in the story.

Do you do an outline before you start the actual writing, or are you more of a stream-of-consciousness writer?

I often wondered why I couldn’t seem to write the more conventional way, but I’ve got to be honest – I don’t care for outlines. I’m definitely a stream-of-consciousness writer!

Have you written other books?

This is my first published work. In my younger days, I wrote lots and lots of poetry, but nothing that I ever tried to have published. I guess for me writing is more of a hobby, and writing is a very liberating exercise of the mind.

Where is your work available?

My book is available from Publish America, Amazon Books, Barnes & Nobles, and through wholesalers Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and Brodart Co.

Do you have a website were readers may learn more about you and your books?

Thanks for asking! Yes, please go to stradisviolin.com.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

Only this, if you have been thinking about writing, but keep putting it off, stop right where you are and start writing! Take it from me – I am an ordinary person – nothing special. No unusual skills or talents. However, I am a very blessed person. Today, this grandmother realized a lifelong dream to be a writer. My first book has been published - an epic tale of depression-era perseverance, love and a young girl’s unique gift.

Thank you, Blenda!

Blenda has agreed to send me a copy of Stradi’s Violin and I will be posting my review here soon.