Livia Cable was content as a piano teacher in her East Tennessee hometown. Her husband was a farmer and they owned the small dairy that began as her father's family farm. Her right hand had been injured in an accident when she was attending college so she didn't have the range that she used to, but her students didn't mind-she inspired them. But her equilibrium was blown apart by the phone call she received one day which swiftly brought the past roaring back.
When Livia Bohusz was a child, she and her older brother measured good days and bad days by the end of the belt that their mother beat them with-a good day was the leather end, a bad day was the buckle end. The only place her mother allowed her to go was their church, where she had to wait while her mother caught up on the town gossip. The church had a piano and Livia began accurately picking out hymn melodies. In third grade, she replaced the retiring church pianist and became the pianist for all school functions. She begged her mother and father for piano lessons where she finally learned music notation. In high school, Livia entered juried competitions in her state and the final prize was a soloist spot with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and a full scholarship to the Indiana University School of Music-she crushed it.
In college she had to work hard to catch up to the other students who had mastered her non-major courses in high school. But it was worth everything to finally learn music theory and put her musical skills in context with the actual compositions. By third year she had stopped struggling and was enjoying her classes and the ability to use the practice pianos for long sessions of piano music. She had a teaching assistant as a roommate who gradually became her fiance, in his quiet way. He had a summer job lined up in Munich and wanted to marry her before he went. One day, as she crossed campus to get to her accompanist job, she saw Him. He was selling papers and was obviously not a student, he looked gorgeous and she felt like lightning struck. After her job she sought him out and found the paper he was selling was a tabloid featuring news of worker strikes. He told her that he worked as a printer but was also a campus union organizer. They went to lunch and he introduced himself as Sigurd. Thus began the affair that changed her life.
A partita is a classical music term for a "string of parts," that comprises a piece of music, and the book title is specifically from Bach's Partita No. 1 in B Flat. Kingsolver sees Livia's life in musical terms and supplies a playlist of mostly classical compositions that are referenced in the novel. If you are not familiar with the pieces, it is very important to conjure them up (Youtube helps). They give this beautifully written novel a depth that most don't have and will help the reader understand Livia's complicated journey. A masterpiece!
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
October 6, 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment