A gripping, precisely composed tale about music and those who give their lives to it.
A young woman attempts to enter the elite and mainly male world of professional classical musicians during the 1950s in this literary novel.
In 1953, cellist Irena “Reenie” Siesel has just graduated from a conservatory. There, she’d been called gifted, exceptional even, but so far she’s only had offers for teaching positions—a path reserved for those unworthy of performing for a living. Making it as a performer is particularly hard for a woman because, as one female musician puts it, “the problem with women performers was they lacked the single-minded devotion necessary to sacrifice everything to their instruments.” Then Reenie gets a call out of the blue to replace the cellist of the Modern Strings, an avant-garde New York ensemble, at a music festival in Newport, Rhode Island. The group will play a selection of pieces, “from the Baroques to the moderns,” culminating in a new work by the ensemble’s difficult but brilliant leader, composer Arthur Cohen. During the four-day festival, Reenie attempts to navigate the tense, interpersonal dynamics of the Modern Strings while learning the material and demonstrating her talent and professionalism. After all, she may be invited at the end of the festival to join the group and move to New York, where the real musicians live. Reenie’s future with the ensemble quickly becomes complicated when, against her better judgment, she sleeps with Cohen in a fit of impulse—losing her virginity. Interspersed with her account of that weekend are scenes from decades later, when Reenie is in the memory unit of an assisted living facility. She receives a composition left by Cohen in his will—a work that he planned to have destroyed if she died before him. Her daughter and Cohen’s niece are arranging a performance in the hopes it will jog Reenie’s failing memory—but are these recollections worth recovering?
Osborn writes with incredible polish and subtlety, toggling between Reenie’s lush, moment-to-moment accounts from the ’50s and retrospective appraisals of the era: “The festival in Newport took place at a time when classical music was at its height in America, with Leonard Bernstein’s orchestra program and large concert audiences. Just ten years later, the audiences would shrink dramatically, but now no one knew that future.” The characters—particularly Reenie but also the demanding Arthur and the ensemble’s messy violinist Charles Breedlove and aloof violist Patrick Dempsey—are deftly rendered, and the author manages to capture seemingly every shifting tension in each relationship. Osborn also succeeds in writing about music in a way that elucidates and elevates an art form that is not easily put into words, particularly the ways in which the members of the group play together. The plot moves slowly, but it quickly teaches readers to appreciate its rhythm, which—like the sea that surrounds the festival location—is somewhat tidal. The narrative is unexpectedly suspenseful, particularly once readers have a grasp of the intensity of the personalities involved. The result is a meditation on art, aspiration, jealously, and selfishness, all placed against the backdrop of gender and shifting trends in the mid-20th-century classical music scene.
A gripping, precisely composed tale about music and those who give their lives to it.Pub Date: May 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60489-250-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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