Someone recently mentioned Vikram Seth's 'An Equal Music'.  Here's a new
novel with a musical subject:

   Disturbance of the Inner Ear
   by Joyce Hackett

   [5 out of 5 stars]     A musical novel in musical prose

   There have been many novels with musical themes - Mann's Doctor
   Faustus; Vikram Seth's An Equal Music; Ann Patchett's Bel Canto,
   to name one acknowledged masterpiece and two more recent books.
   This is another.  It's the hauntingly told story of a virtuoso
   cellist, Isabel Masurovsky, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor,
   himself a pianist.  In a melange of remembering and forgetting
   she believes she has lost her musical gift forever; she is adrift.
   The style of writing is somewhat disjunct, but close reading
   allows one to catch the thread of the narrative, and one realizes
   that the disjointed narrative reflects Isabel's inner life as
   she struggles to reclaim her gift and begin her life anew.

   The story itself is harrowing, yet tender and wise.  But the
   novel's main glory is Hackett's use of language.  A couple of
   examples, picked almost at random: "I floated out into his flood
   of language, grabbing at branches, but not understanding much."
   "Milan is a grim, gray, German city.  Its few surviving Italian
   grace notes dim amid chord after heavy chord of industrial postwar
   morass."

   The writer obviously knows a great deal about music and, for
   this musical reader, her surefootedness on musical topics helps
   make it a joy to read.  So often writers strike false notes in
   their musical prose.

   Recommended urgently.

Scott Morrison