Dave Wolf wrote:

>Attention all lovers of art-song, theoretical physics (a little), American
>(and world) history from the 1930s to more recent times, and especially,
>great fiction writing.  I strongly recommend an astonishing new novel
>called The Time of Our Singing, by Richard Powers

I couldn't agree more.  In fact, I wrote a customer review for the
Amazon.com site (which, I believe, you can still reach via classical.net:
click on links-->commercial links-->retail & mail order-->amazon, and
by doing, if you purchase anything, benefit our own Dave Lampson's
Classical.net in a concrete way) as follows [Actually, there are links
to Amazon and Amazon UK on the home page a little further down.  Thanks
Scott.  -Dave]:

As a fervent classical music-lover and voracious reader, I have read many
novels over the years that had music as a background. One immediately
thinks of Vikram Seth's 'An Equal Music,' which was fine, and a wonderful
debut novel, 'Disturbance of the Inner Ear,' by Joyce Hackett.

I've just finished one that is head and shoulders above either of
those mentioned: 'The Time of Our Singing,' by one of our greatest living
novelists (and I don't say that lightly), Richard Powers.  I've read all
his books ever since my daughter gave me a copy of 'The Gold Bug Variations'
(which itself has an awful lot of music in it; and yes, that pun that
is more than just a catchy title).

The book's theme, if one can say it is just one thing, is what it's
like to be of mixed race in America (and in the latter pages, in the Old
World).  I won't bore you with a plot outline. I will say that there is
not a page that doesn't have some reference to music, primarily classical,
although there are some pages that refer to gospel songs, popular music,
jazz, even smoky bar music.  The writer never puts a foot wrong; he
obviously is a music-maker himself.  There is no other way, I think, he
could have written such detailed, emotionally right passages about making
music.  The only solecism I detected in 600+ pages was a reference, in
passing, to Simon Estes as a tenor. As far as I know he has always sung
as a bass-baritone.

The characters are Powers's most appealing.  The plot has more twists
than a Rocky Mountain switchback.  The prose is poetic in its evocativeness.
And we CARE about what happens.

I believe that this is Powers's best book - and again I say this as a
fervent admirer of his 'Plowing the Dark,' 'The Gold Bug Variations,'
and 'Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance,' as well as 'Galatea 2.2.'

Scott Morrison