Piano For The Soul

Author : Frank Conroy
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547729014
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (477 download)

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Download or read book Body & Soul written by Frank Conroy and published by HMH. This book was released on 1993-09-29 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This saga of a son of the working class who grows into a piano prodigy is “hypnotically readable . . . The best story I know of in a long, long time” (Vanity Fair). As a boy, Claude Rawlings looks up through the grated window of his basement apartment to watch the world go by. Poor, lonely, supported by a taxi-driver mother whose eccentricities spin more and more out of control, he faces the terrible task of growing up on the margins of life, destined to be a spectator of that great world always hurrying out of reach. But there is an out-of-tune piano in the small apartment, and in unlocking the secrets of its keys, as if by magic, Claude discovers himself. He is a musical prodigy. Body & Soul is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a gift. The gift is not without price—the work is relentless, the teachers exacting—but the reward is a journey that takes him to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful, private schools, a gilt-edged marriage, and Carnegie Hall. Claude moves through this life as if he were playing a difficult composition, swept up in its drama and tension, surprised by its grace notes. Music, here, becomes a character in its own right, equaled in strength only by the music of Frank Conroy’s own unmistakable and true voice. Bristling with character and invention, Body & Soul is Dickensian in its range and richness. This is a novel with all the emotional appeal and moral gravity of a classic bildungsroman, but with a tone as contemporary as a jazz riff—an unforgettable achievement by one of the great writers of our time.