Music from a Distant Room

by Stephanie Johnson

A moving novel about a blind son with a love for music that surpassed sight and gave him a vision uniquely his own.A fortnight after jazz pianist Carl Tyler's funeral, his lover Tamara has one week to go before she leaves New Zealand to return to her native Chicago. His mother Nola wants to solve the mystery of her son's death, to know everything Tamara might be able tell her, so she begins an account of Carl's early life, in the hope that Tamara will remember a clue to what happened at its end.Nola was a dental nurse in the 1960s. Her life revolved around her spotless dental clinic at the local school, the 'murder house' the kids called it. She didn't know it, but by taking an interest in young Brett's bruises, and meeting his father Bernie, her life would be changed for ever.

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. 5^

Stephanie Johnson is the author of several collections of poetry and of short stories, some plays and adaptations, and many fine novels. The New Zealand Listener commented that ‘Stephanie Johnson is a writer of talent and distinction. Over the course of an award-winning career — during which she has written plays, poetry, short stories and novels — she has become a significant presence in the New Zealand literary landscape, a presence cemented and enhanced by her roles as critic and creative writing teacher.' the Shag Incident won the Montana Deutz Medal for Fiction in 2003, and Belief was shortlisted for the same award. Stephanie has also won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, and was the 2001 Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. Many of her novels have been published in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. She co-founded the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival with Peter Wells in 1999.

Reviews

[C.J. Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Auckland, New Zealand, this novel is about a mother who desperately wants to understand her son's death and tells the son's wife stories about his and her own past in the hope of getting to the bottom of the mystery. So many long flashbacks that sometimes you forget that it is actually set in the present as you get caught up in the stories.

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The majority of Music from a Distant Room is told as flashbacks as a conversation between Nola, the mother of Carl, a recently deceased blind musician, and Tamara, Carl's girlfriend. Nola hopes that the trip down memory lane will jog Tamara's own memory of the events leading up to Carl's death. I'd say the story is mostly a love story about Nola and Carl's father Bernie.

What I loved:
* The present day action takes place in the Auckland I knew and loved (the novel was written while I lived in New Zealand). The references to the geography brought back some of my own memories, and I enjoyed this personal connection.

* The story itself was bittersweet, realistic, and beautiful.

What I didn't love:
* I'm not really a big fan of the flashback device. It can be a bit jarring to have a good story interrupted to shift back-and-forth between present and past.