A review by elzecatreads
The Piano Student by Lea Singer

3.0

The Piano Student is a novel based on letters written by Russian-born classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz to a young student, Nico Kaufmann. The story is told by a much older Nico in the 1980s to a somewhat random stranger who hears him playing piano. Nico describes his erratic student/teacher relationship with the older Horowitz, who was married to Toscanini's daughter, and insinuates that Horowitz was homosexual, despite his marriage to a woman, and that Horowitz and Nico had a brief, romantic relationship.

I did not enjoy this book. While I found the narrative of Horowitz's life interesting, I did not find either him or Nico to be particularly compelling or sympathetic characters and I didn't feel like there was much of a plot or real character development.