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sterling8 's review for:
The Weight of a Piano
by Chris Cander
I read this for a mystery book club. We've had a couple books for this club that I might have reviewed better if I hadn't been looking at them as mysteries. This probably falls into that category, for there's no mystery in the book- at least not one that can be solved from any clues given by the author. Instead, it's a story that withholds information until the author is ready to release it for dramatic purposes.
This is also the book in the subgenre "girl/woman who is unhappy finds a McGuffin (a book, a diary, a piece of art, a music box, or in this case a piano) and this gives the author an excuse to write an entirely different story about the same McGuffin set in the past, and this gives the framing story main character a growth experience." I am not a fan of this extremely overused literary device.
So the framing story in this case is Clara's. Clara is a tragic orphan mechanic who has a piano that was a gift from her father, and it's the only thing she has left from her past. Clara is afraid to be close to people because they "all leave her". The story-in-a-story is about a depressed Russian pianist in Soviet Russia named Katya. How will Katya's piano end up with Clara? What coincidences and connections will Clara find? How will Clara learn to accept the love that was right there the whole time? Why are all the men in this book (except one) completely awful?
I didn't much care. I also sort of resented the piano being used as a metaphor for the weight of the past that must be tossed away in order to move on. Poor piano! I play myself, and I felt the piano was the most sympathetic character in the book. It actually gets a POV chapter, which read like a creative writing workshop exercise that should NOT have been put into a book.
This is also the book in the subgenre "girl/woman who is unhappy finds a McGuffin (a book, a diary, a piece of art, a music box, or in this case a piano) and this gives the author an excuse to write an entirely different story about the same McGuffin set in the past, and this gives the framing story main character a growth experience." I am not a fan of this extremely overused literary device.
So the framing story in this case is Clara's. Clara is a tragic orphan mechanic who has a piano that was a gift from her father, and it's the only thing she has left from her past. Clara is afraid to be close to people because they "all leave her". The story-in-a-story is about a depressed Russian pianist in Soviet Russia named Katya. How will Katya's piano end up with Clara? What coincidences and connections will Clara find? How will Clara learn to accept the love that was right there the whole time? Why are all the men in this book (except one) completely awful?
I didn't much care. I also sort of resented the piano being used as a metaphor for the weight of the past that must be tossed away in order to move on. Poor piano! I play myself, and I felt the piano was the most sympathetic character in the book. It actually gets a POV chapter, which read like a creative writing workshop exercise that should NOT have been put into a book.