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Disturbance
of the Inner Ear by Joyce Hackett Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Lingering Melody Joyce Hackett’s novel, Disturbance
of the Inner Ear, contains a most unusual central character, a cello,
named the Savant. The narrator, Isabel Masurovsky, meets the Savant while on
an outward and inward journey making connections and disconnections with
people and places. Thanks to Hackett’s skill, the novel exudes Isabel’s grief
like a fine cello. Her father, Yuri, was a survivor of Theresienstadt,
who encouraged Isabel to develop her gifts as a cellist.
Shortly after her Carnegie Hall debut, her parents die in an auto accident.
Isabel abandons her art. We find her in Milan at the deathbed of the elderly
Signor Perso, her cello teacher, lover, and guardian. More grief. Here’s an excerpt
from pp. 64-5, after Isabel takes a job in Milan as the viola teacher for
teenager, Clayton Pettyward: In
the dining room, Mr. Pettyward was standing behind his chair, reading, his
thin rectangular glasses edging down towards the tip of his nose. There was
no sign of Clayton. The long table was set with a white linen cloth and lit
candles. —Miss Masurovsky, he said, gesturing me to sit
down. I stand until the women are seated. So try not to keep me
waiting. I have fallen arches. I nodded. The first dish cradled three small
potatoes; the second, some withered, grayish green beans; the third, a pink
gooey mash that Mr. Pettyward said was Gurney ham that a client had sent from
Virginia. He served himself and passed the plate. It looked like the dog food
Yuri and I had eaten once in Hungary, after he'd gotten a couple of bad
addresses on someone he was looking for, and our money ran out. Still, I took
a significant helping. My travels with Yuri had taught me to eat what there
was. Mr.
Pettyward announced that he had had lunch at the Vatican with a cardinal.
They had revisited the Bildersturm question. Mr. Pettyward was of the
opinion that it was high time for Rome to finally demand rightful restitution
from the Calvinists for the German Catholic church art destroyed in the riots after
the Reformation. He took a potato, and shook his head, muttering to the
effect that people never value what comes for free. Had he been offered half
of what had been wasted on Clayton, he went on, he might have developed into
quite a musician. For the moment he thought he would have to settle for
enlightened connoisseurship. Had I managed to give our friend a workout? I had decided to skate lightly over the
conversation, my tone a light, lively vivace. —Claytons got a
math test tomorrow, I said, though the two of us had not yet spoken. —He’s failing math, Mr. Pettyward said. In point of
fact he has an extraordinarily high aptitude. He’s eligible for MENSA, but he’s
too stubborn to join. I bought him a subscription to the newsletter, even had
the executive director—he’s a close friend—cable him directly. Clayton
prefers not to take the test. I have the newsletters bound, though. Sooner or
later we all come to terms with who we are. I sneezed. —So have you managed to give our friend a workout? I realized he'd meant the Savant. —This morning,
yes. —Bless you. And what did you play? —The Franck Sonata. Mr. Pettyward passed me the green beans. —How do
you spell that? Oh. Of course. Frahnk. I didn’t recognize it the way you
pronounced it. How many pages did you learn? I shrugged stupidly. I knew the piece by heart,
like everybody else. —How many measures then? I had no idea how to proceed, so I took another
helping of meat. Hackett’s knowledge and love of music, her
sensitivity to emotions, and the inner life, and all the power of the
concentration camps, come together in this tightly written, emotionally taut
first novel. Be prepared when you pick up Disturbance
of the Inner Ear: the cello can deliver lingering melodies. Steve Hopkins, February 27, 2002 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the March 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Disturbance
of the Inner Ear.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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