christinel 's review for:

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel

4.0

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This book is carefully constructed so that the structure mirrors the subject matter. It takes on the subject of a string quartet and how they make music together, and how the act of working at music together, creating, results in a complicated quasi-family over the years, not from choosing each other really but just from being present in one another's lives. The book weaves among the four perspectives as each might take a prominent role in different sections of the music. The structure is tight, but the author lets their lives be messy, neither good nor bad, just rich and complicated and also boring and ordinary. I love the way they showed their hours of daily practice as transforming their bodies over time as they age - the chronic pain, the changes in their postures, the bruises where their instruments wear against their body. It's not an easy happy book but the artistry of it is compelling.