- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Carroll & Graf (Oct 1 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0786710462
- ISBN-13: 978-0786710461
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.9 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 553 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Defiantly out of the ordinary and meticulously composed, this intensely inward-focused novel narrates the wanderings of Isabel Masurovsky, a former child prodigy cellist adrift in Italy. Isabel's father, Yuri, is a survivor of Theresienstadt, the Nazi concentration camp for high-level prisoners. In Brooklyn after the war, he pressures his gifted daughter to perform. Her Carnegie debut at 14 is a smashing success, but soon afterward her parents are killed in an accident, and she gives up the cello. Ten years later, she appears in Milan, beside the dead body of Signor Perso, the old man who has been her teacher, lover and caretaker since her parents' death. Deprived of the one person who knows her past, she stumbles into the Milan winter, taking a job as viola teacher for 16-year-old Clayton Pettyward, the withdrawn son of a rich American, who hums incessantly and names all his tropical fish after Isabel. She also crosses paths with Giulio, a plastic surgeon and gigolo who is as detached in his own way as she is in hers, and they embark on a curious love affair. Hackett's dense, staggered narration skips from present to past and back again, building up an unusual yet wholly credible portrait of Isabel, who religiously practices self-denial until a tragic accident makes her realize how destructive her behavior has become. The novel concludes with her visit to Theresienstadt, where she is determined to burn a valuable cello belonging to Clayton's father. Incisively written and often inspired, this keenly imagined novel earns admittance to a small collection of similarly uncompromising, stylistically distinctive novels, among them the works of Jean Rhys and Jane Bowles.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
With the death of her cello teacher, Signor Perso, Isabel Masurovsky is overcome with memories of her parents, who perished in a car crash on the night of her Carnegie Hall debut. A child prodigy, Isabel was managed by her father, Yuri, a Holocaust survivor and an acclaimed pianist in his own right. Now living in Italy and teaching cello to a reluctant young student, Isabel meets a surgeon named Giulio, who is also a male prostitute. Though an unlikely couple, they help each other come to terms with their individual problems. Isabel's quest to make peace with her past and to start living in the present culminates in Terezin, formerly in Czechoslovakia, where she finds the remains of the Nazi camp, Theresienstadt. Here, Yuri played piano in the prisoner orchestra which saved his life. With a real flair for language, first novelist Hackett tells a fascinating story that makes the reader eager to hear the music that Isabel describes. For larger fiction collections in public and academic libraries.
Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
The end could have been made into a good short story,
By A Customer
Ce commentaire est de: Disturbance of the Inner Ear: A Novel (Hardcover)
I forced myself to finish this book because I had already put so much time into it, and I'm glad I did because the ending is quite moving. With a bit of a lead-in, the author could have made a fine short story out of the last scene, Isabel's return to Theresienstadt, without tormenting us with the rest of this pretentious, improbable tale. What exactly did Joyce Hackett study when she was at the University of Milan? It clearly was not Italian. Her grammatical mistakes in Italian are appalling, especially when she makes such a big point of them: "Lasciami star...we never stopped using the formal", she points out at the beginning of the fourth chapter. Actually, "lasciami star" is precisely NOT the formal. Unfortunately, there are many errors of that type. Then there is the Italian custom of avoiding quotation marks and using dashes instead. That would have been wonderfully effective had Ms. Hackett only used it correctly. But, alas, she did not, and, as a result, she just makes us reread her sentences to be sure we've understood them. Not one character in the book aroused my sympathy with the possible exception of a couple of the goldfish. I am at a loss to understand all the five-star reviews.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astonishing book about music,
By "gingerpuss" (Nutley, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
Ce commentaire est de: Disturbance of the Inner Ear: A Novel (Hardcover)
It's not often that you read a book about music that's actually musical, but Disturbance is not an ordinary book. The novel deals with the way in which music imprints itself on the narrator's brain--as subject and as form and as way of dealing with the world. It really is like she is swimming in it as she sets out trying to survive without many resources in Italy. So much of the book is about various forms of performance, as she becomes involved with an Italian doctor who moonlights as a male gigolo. It looks at the ways we instruct and command ourselves due to the training and rules we learn. REALLY interestingly written.
5.0 out of 5 stars
haunting novel for a music lover,
By Carol C. "ccjello" (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
Ce commentaire est de: Disturbance of the Inner Ear: A Novel (Hardcover)
Haunting prose about an orphaned cellist's path toward understanding her roots, understanding her father, and understanding her gift. Isabel, a talented and troubled young prodigy, is debuting at Carnegie Hall on the evening that her parents are killed in an accident. A much older lover/benefactor takes her under his wings, and she is again cast adrift when he dies while the two are in Milan. Isabel tries to survive in Milan, and becomes entangled with interesting characters. She is skilled at avoidance, and is constantly running away from intimacy and revelation, running toward her roots. What made this novel particularly intriguing were the author's frequent references to music, musicians (cellists in particular), and her descriptions of Isabel's emotions and interpretations of specific pieces of music. This novel should hold particular appeal for a serious lover of classical music.
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