Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "bernard-maclaverty"
Grace Notes
Sure, writing about music is like dancing about architecture...except when it's this writing. I was scouring my shelves last week, looking for something gorgeous and sad and suffused with color, just to remind me that such sensations existed while I hunched in what has become my personal no-shadows corner of the Jury Assembly Room, and I found this book. Which my dad apparently found for me, in 1998--there's one of his loving little inscriptions in the front--and which got forgotten about in the to-read piles during one of our moves.
Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty.
It's about an Irish woman composer dealing with being an Irish woman composer, and also a single mom, and island resident, a lapsed Catholic. Not much happens, except living. Hard relating, sweet and fleeting surprise moments of grace. And then the music comes. This is just a snippet of the description of the first performance of the piece our protagonist spends most of this hushed, beautiful novel dragging out of herself:
"It began with a wisp of music, barely there--a whispered five-note phrase on the violins and she was right back on that beach with her baby. If the audience thought themselves mistaken she would be well pleased. Did I hear that correctly? Like the artist's hand which moves to begin a drawing but makes no mark. Preliminary footering--throat clearing. Then the phrase repeated an eyelash louder. I did hear something...But the pause is longer, seems interminable before the music begins again. Is it over? they should be saying. Or have they not started yet. The phrase repeats a third time on the violas. They sound like violins with a cold. Yes, it has started, that there is something there is undeniable...starting friction has been overcome and now the phrase unravels..."
You can get it at Powells.
Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty. It's about an Irish woman composer dealing with being an Irish woman composer, and also a single mom, and island resident, a lapsed Catholic. Not much happens, except living. Hard relating, sweet and fleeting surprise moments of grace. And then the music comes. This is just a snippet of the description of the first performance of the piece our protagonist spends most of this hushed, beautiful novel dragging out of herself:
"It began with a wisp of music, barely there--a whispered five-note phrase on the violins and she was right back on that beach with her baby. If the audience thought themselves mistaken she would be well pleased. Did I hear that correctly? Like the artist's hand which moves to begin a drawing but makes no mark. Preliminary footering--throat clearing. Then the phrase repeated an eyelash louder. I did hear something...But the pause is longer, seems interminable before the music begins again. Is it over? they should be saying. Or have they not started yet. The phrase repeats a third time on the violas. They sound like violins with a cold. Yes, it has started, that there is something there is undeniable...starting friction has been overcome and now the phrase unravels..."
You can get it at Powells.
