Partita

by Barbara Kingsolver

A deeply moving new novel about life and art from one of America’s greatest writers.

Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.

Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the traumas of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.

With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless love affair between life and art.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Music, Historical, Adult Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 6, 2026

About the author

Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011 and the National Humanities Medal. After winning for The Lacuna in 2010 and Demon Copperhead in 2023, Kingsolver became the first author to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice. Since 1993, each one of her book titles have been on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Kingsolver was raised in rural Kentucky, lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood, and she currently lives in Appalachia. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. In 2000, the politically progressive Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change".

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enduring a traumatic, abusive childhood and a horrible loss, Livia Bohusz has nothing but her dreams, her musical talent and her motivation left as she leaves home and becomes estranged to her family to follow those dreams . During the course of her studies she falls in love with someone who is more dedicated to a cause than to her and endures even more devastating losses that change the course of her life once again.

In this first person, introspective and alternating narrative we see Livia in those early days and decades later as Livia Chase now settled in her life having to face the revelations of family secrets and the decision about whether to reconnect with her past .

Chapters titles are named after classical music compositions or dances , or terms - none of which I was familiar with. I assumed they had meaning in the context of the chapters. That didn’t keep me from being moved by the story reflecting resilience in the face of heartache, self recognition and the knowledge that “salvation comes in its own ways”. A beautiful rendering of how a broken creative spirit rises to the call of what home and family and love really mean. This is my tenth novel by Kingsolver and she never disappoints .

I received a copy of this book from Harper Collins through Edelweiss .

[vinnie]

i have never been so excited to sob

[Liz Hein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Partita is the “Heart the Lover” of 2026 - 4.5 ⭐️

[Colin Jack]

I haven’t read a single page yet, but here’s what I do know: Barbara Kingsolver is about to hit us with heartbreak, class commentary, music metaphors, and at least one character who makes you question all your life choices.

If Demon Copperhead taught me anything, it’s that Kingsolver can make you laugh, gasp, and marvel at the sheer precision of her storytelling. Partita promises all that, but with pianos, ghosts from the past, and a protagonist juggling love, ambition, and long-buried secrets.

I’m here for it. I will be fully invested in Livia Cable’s choices, cheer for her triumphs, and probably celebrate every exquisitely framed sentence.

5/5 stars in advance, because optimism.

[Stephanie]

Inject this into my veins.

[Cherie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, I love Barbara Kingsolver. Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer are all favorites of mine. I was so excited to get an advanced copy of this book.

Livia is a remarkable pianist. Her childhood revolves around the hours she spends perfecting her craft. After receiving a scholarship to a prestigious music school, she leaves home, putting strained relationships with her family behind her. While at the music school, she meets Sigurd, a political activist, who becomes her lover. After a freak accident, Livia is forced to reevaluate what she wanted from life. Years later, a call from Sigurd makes her question her choices and face her past.

This was another 5 ⭐ book for me. I loved Livia and related to her so much - making big decisions that you question, life taking unexpected turns, learning to take the good with the bad. And of course, the book is typical Barbara Kingsolver; brilliantly written, beautiful prose, a story that keeps the reader second guessing, loveable characters. It was amazing!

HOWEVER, I am also a professional pianist. There were so many references to piano techniques, composers, piano repertoire, musical terminology. I wonder if someone who is not musically trained will have the same experience with the novel that I did. Certainly not that they couldn't, I just found that many of the sections discussing her music would be much more impactful if the reader has some sort of musical knowledge. For example, "My triumph in the preliminaries, and then onstage with all those exquisitely black-clad adults, heads cocked, bows tilted at the ready as I threw my whole upper body into the falling minor second, falling minor third of the opening motif, was the peak of my seventeen years." Or, "The Turkish march is all up and up, with its octave-wide, wobbly marches up the scales like a toddler pretending to be a king, and the laughing, trilled B-flat at the top..."

Overall, I LOVED this book and it's likely one that I'll reread again. I hope that others have the same experience that I did with the novel.

Many, many thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber for an advanced copy. It's scheduled to be published on October 6, 2026.

[Mariana Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure my words will do Partita any justice.

It was a beautifully written book, telling the story of Livia, who we meet in middle age. She recounts her terrible upbringing, abusive mother, and a short-lived romance during college and the consequences, especially as her former lover wants to visit her some 30 years later.

Kingsolver used a lot of musical terms which I admittedly didn’t understand the meanings of. That made the reading difficult. The book also came with a listening list. I would try to list to the piece while reading about it. I would find myself forgetting about the book, trying to listen to the story of the song (the sound of horses galloping, bells tolling, etc.)

I may listen to this again when the audiobook comes out. Perhaps it will offer a different experience.

Many thanks to Net Galley for providing me with an advanced reader copy.

[Susan's Reviews]

The blurb drew me right in! I truly wanted to read this story!



Alas, I was only able to "Wish for It!" (You have to act fast for the more popular titles.)



Many are called, but few are chosen!



Fingers crossed for this one!

[Creed Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness kingsolver can write. I actually enjoyed this more than demon copperhead, but I’m not sure that will be the prevailing opinion.

A story of time and life and love and loss

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read most of Kingsolver’s books, and she can still surprise me. This novel contains what might be the sexiest scene in the history of literary novels. Remember the movie Ghost. with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore at the pottery wheel? This romantic encounter is at a piano instead of a wheel, and it SIZZLES.

I love reading about artists, all kinds of artists. In this novel, the main character is Livia, a young woman who is a serious and ambitious pianist. She’s always found refuge in music partly because her family is a mess. Her mother is abusive and unhappy, and also a hoarder, her father is sweet but distant and unwilling to intervene, and her brother ended his life by throwing himself under a train when Livia was eleven.

This probably isn’t as good as Demon Copperhead? Or no, it’s just narrower in its scope. I loved it as much, though, because Kingsolver included a playlist at the beginning of this novel. I used it when I could, and it absolutely heightened the experience of reading. I tried to always stop and play the music she prescribed for certain sections of the book. Why don’t I listen to classical music all the time? The feelings are so big.

The feelings in this novel are big. I’m not going to lie. There are two timelines, one in which Livia is 20, a very serious and ambitious pianist and one in which she lives in the present, 30 years later, and she gets a phone call from the lover she lost all those years ago. In the past, Kingsolver creates a character you care about, and you watch a compelling romance unfold— and then she wrecks her, takes away everything that Livia felt was essential to who she was and flings her back into the messy, depressing lair of her miserable, withholding mother. It’s rough.

Years later, she’s patched together a life, but she still feels broken. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the week or so in which the narrative set in the present takes place, she realizes that she’s whole. And in the last scenes of the novel, you see the richness of the life she’s created for herself.

Barbara Kingsolver is very good at endings.

Stray thoughts:

Thinking back, I couldn’t really remember much about music in her other books. I wondered, was she always so conversant with classical music or did she just learn all of this for this book? And it turns out that she actually was a serious student of piano in her youth. This is one where you’ll want to read the author’s notes at the end of the book.

I wanted to help Livia clean out her hoarder mother’s house. I could feel it in my body, my desire to haul out stacks of Raisin Bran boxes, trashbags of grocery store receipts, piles of rinsed and saved cottage cheese containers.

[The Bookish Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the sprawling social fury of Demon Copperhead, the new novel from one of America's most decorated living writers returns to the same Appalachian soil with a smaller cast and a quieter ambition. Partita by Barbara Kingsolver is a memory novel built like a baroque suite, named after the J.S. Bach form that organizes loose dances around a shared key. The structural choice is not ornament. It is the engine.

Livia Cable, a piano teacher on a small Tennessee dairy, gets a phone call from a man she has not heard from in over twenty years. He asks to come see her. He gives her a week to decide. What follows is not a plot in the usual sense but a reckoning, paced through movements titled Allemande, Toccata, Sarabande, Fugue, Pathétique, Da Capo, and Al Fine, with seven numbered preludes braided between them.

The Story, Kept Spoiler-Free

In her younger life, Livia was Livia Bohusz, a scholarship student at a serious music conservatory, the first in her family to leave the tobacco-and-cattle county where she was raised. The seven days she gives herself to decide pull her backward into memories of her brother's early death, a mother she could never please, a roommate she liked more than she loved, and the stranger who arrived one spring with a leftist tabloid and changed the shape of her life. The present-day stakes are quiet. The past-tense stakes are not.

Kingsolver lets none of this arrive as exposition. It arrives the way memory actually arrives, in fragments tied to a pair of empty shoes left under a piano, a song her brother used to whistle, a court report buried in an old envelope. The reader earns the picture in pieces, often turning back a page to confirm that a small detail just turned seismic.

A Country Voice, Tuned for the Page

The first thing readers will notice is the cadence of the narration. Livia speaks the way a smart country woman speaks who has spent years translating Tennessee for Indiana and still prefers, in the end, the original.

A few measures of how the voice carries itself:

A child cannot hate her mother without putting the load-bearing walls of the known world at risk.
Bodies are what we have, underneath all the mind's drama, just pitiable flesh.
College is a cloister; you forget what a thin little spine you are on the big loud bookshelves of the living.

This is plain writing that earns its plainness through years of looking. The voice in Partita by Barbara Kingsolver feels closer to Prodigal Summer and Animal Dreams in temperament than to the wider-angle Poisonwood Bible or the angrier Demon Copperhead. It is older, drier, more interior.

What the Musical Structure Actually Does

Readers who do not know classical piano repertoire may worry the form will lose them. It does not. Kingsolver has placed a Listening List at the front of the novel, naming each piece her characters play, from Chopin's Raindrop Prelude to Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit to the J.S. Bach C Minor Partita that gives the book its title. The list is generous. Reading without it loses very little of the story.

What the musical structure does is something subtler. Each dance carries the emotional shape of its baroque form. The Sarabande, traditionally slow and weighted, carries the heaviest grief. The Toccata moves fast and shows off. The Fugue layers voices that contradict one another and refuses to settle. The Pathétique borrows the wrenching dignity of the Beethoven sonata. By the time the Da Capo arrives, the reader feels in the bones of the prose what it means to repeat a theme in a changed key.

What Lands Hardest

A few elements are the strongest reasons to read this novel:

Class. Few mainstream novelists write working-class rural characters with this much accuracy and this little sentimentality. The arguments between Livia and her lover about meritocracy, and the campus segregation between college kids and shift workers, are the most honest version of that conversation in recent fiction.
The marriage. Livia's husband Charlie is the kind of secondary character who could go badly wrong, the patient good man waiting at home. Instead he is given his own injury, his own gravity, his own surprises. He is among the quiet astonishments of the book.
The mother. A hoarder, a withholder, a woman whose disappointments have run her life. Kingsolver refuses to make her either villain or victim, and what the daughter finds in that wreck of a house arrives with a force the reader does not see coming.
The hand. Livia's right hand is injured early. Kingsolver writes the loss of an artist's instrument with the precision of someone who has lived close to it. The acknowledgments confirm she has.
Where the Book Is Less Sure of Itself

A four-star novel is not a five-star one, and Partita by Barbara Kingsolver has its honest seams. Without spoiling anything:

The pacing in the middle section drags. The cleaning out of the mother's house, while thematically essential, occupies more pages than its narrative weight can quite hold.
The lover, in his older incarnation, occasionally flattens into a vehicle for political argument rather than a man with present-tense desires. He is sharper in memory than in the now.
The density of classical-music vocabulary, while translated patiently, will ask some readers for more patience than they bargained for from a literary novel.
The closing notes are tender. A few readers will find them earned, others a touch too soft for a story that has been bracingly hard up to that point.

These are not fatal flaws. They are the small frictions that keep a very fine novel from being an unimpeachable one.

Who Should Read This Novel

Readers who loved the interior, memory-soaked work of Olive Kitteridge or Crossing to Safety will feel at home here. Readers who came for the social anger of Demon Copperhead may be surprised by the smaller scope, but rewarded if they let the book set its own tempo. Anyone who has ever played a hard piece badly, lost a brother, married the wrong man, married the right one, or stood at the edge of a life they did not pick will find a sentence here that finds them back.

Coda

The Toni Morrison line at the front of the book gives away the thesis: sometimes you do not survive whole, you survive in part. Partita by Barbara Kingsolver is six hundred and some pages of evidence that the part you do survive can still make a sound worth hearing. It is not her loudest novel and it may not be her most plot-driven, but for readers willing to slow down and listen, it is a generous and quietly major piece of work from a writer who is still writing as if every sentence has to earn its keep.

[Kristina Nichole]

JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS......



DEMON COPPERHEAD 5 stars forever

[MundiNova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beauty doesn't have to be big to be significant or life-changing.

It took me about a month to read the first half of this book, and then less than a day to read the second half. I foolishly didn't trust Kingsolver to deliver. That was my mistake.

This isn't like The Poisonwood Bible or Demon Copperhead. It's not epic or spanning space and time. It's big, but in the way the smallness of a life is big. Like the moments of sitting out on the front porch and listening to good music with someone you've shared a life with.

It's a true work of art. There are scenes and moments that build upon each other, like a good piece of music. Coming back, repeating. There are revelations that are surprising. If you enjoyed Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, then you'll really love this book.

So, if I'm singing such high praise now, why did it take me a month to read ~150 pages?

Well, Livia was kinda annoying and single-minded in the beginning. She made stupid choices that only a young woman can make. Things that reminded me too much of myself during my college days. I wanted her to treat herself better, see the people around her for who they really are. But that's what's needed for great character development. Characters need to grow and learn. Then there was the relationship with her mother ...

This is going to be one hell of a book hangover.

Story: 4 stars
Character Development: 5 stars
Writing: 10 out of 5 stars

[Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new novel by Barbara Kingsolver is always an event, and one that includes music, the Appalachians, and trauma is something not to be missed. Partita tells the story of Livia Bohusz, a phenomenally gifted pianist who is growing up in a small Eastern Tennessee town where she does not have a piano or supportive parents. Her brother and father understand somewhat but her mother is dead set against music, college or anything that might make Livia too "stuck up" to marry a local boy. But she does go to college at Indiana University's College of Music where her talent flourishes and she is able to begin exploring a new world. She falls madly in love with a non-musician, and tragedy strikes not once, but twice. What will her life be like now?

Kingsolver writes gorgeously about music through the eyes of someone who understands it in a way most of us never could. She gets the judging/embracing culture of small town Southern life. But Partita includes aspects that I felt dragged down Demon Copperhead, that one-thing-after-the- other plotting that made me mutter, "really? What next?" I could not latch onto Livia's love for Sigurd, the didactic labor organizer who is just too much. Once Sigurd's out of the picture the novel takes flight with Kingsolver's wonderful sense of place, character, and heart. Partita comes to a satisfying, if somewhat sentimental, end, that I really loved.

There are lots of triggers in this novel, but it wouldn't be Barbara Kingsolver if there weren't. Thanks to Edelweiss + for a digital review copy of this novel> Here is my honest review.

[Matt Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of @barbara.kingsolver and enjoyed PARTITA, her newest novel out this October. I believe it is her finest work since THE LACUNA (which you should totally check out if you haven’t read it).

The story is told in two separate segments, one with the narrator as a mature adult, the other a retrospective of her college years. In both, the narrator is faced with themes of loss: lost love, lost innocence, lost loved ones, and lost beauty. Of the two, the college narrative is where the book really sings.

Kingsolver really did her homework on musicians and classical music. She writes with the fluency of a musician; she deserves major kudos for having a merry band of music makers willing to help. I also appreciated the track list on the first page which covers each major piece depicted in the novel.

Likewise, the prose sings. Kingsolver is at the height of her lyrical power. Nearly every page left me breathless from the beauty of it all.

That said, PARTITA is not without flaws. In true Kingsolver fashion, the political overwhelms the story at times. While never quite approaching a heavy handed lecture on Marx, at times I started to skim to get back to what was really happening. Still, Kingsolver skillfully works political criticism into the narrative without overdoing it—while she occasionally toes that line, she never crosses it.

All in all, this is another splendid entry from one of America’s most important writers. Book clubs will love PARTITA, but so will solo readers already familiar with Kingsolver’s work and general style and message.

[Linda Grana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel "Partita", and am needing to just sit with its lingering aftermath. I went into this book blindly, not knowing anything about it other than it most likely had something to do with music based on the cover. I was almost halfway through the book before I was even able to guess much else about it. But THAT's what I love about Kingsolver's storytelling! She quite often begins by taking you for a ride—you have no idea where you're going—and then things begin to come together, leaving you questioning how it is you feel you've entered a whole new story.
This tale of an extremely talented young woman, an aspiring pianist, who suffers two devastating losses early on, becomes a heartfelt story of forgiveness, healing, and acceptance. It's a tale of brothers and sisters, pianos, classical music, a dog's devotion, farm life, and choices and sacrifices made. Though not sure how I felt about it initially, this novel blossomed into one that captured my heart and will stay there for a long time.
Many thanks to Harper and NetGalley for allowing me to be an early reader of this book.

[Mallory Moyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The point of art is to help you like your life better.”

Livia escapes a difficult childhood via a scholarship to train as a pianist. Her intense romance with Sigurd leads to two major catastrophes with physical and emotional fallout. Decades later, she is back in her hometown, and Sigurd calls to say he wants to stop by for a visit. The narrative bounces between young Livia and older Livia, exploring how the tragedies from her youth have shaped the woman she becomes.

(A) I really liked this - Barbara Kingsolver is SUCH A GOOD WRITER oh my goodness.
(B) I did not love it - I’m holding it up to Demon Copperhead, which is a Masterpiece, and Partita is comparatively Really Quite Excellent.
(C) I will absolutely recommend people read it - this is about the essentialness of music to memory and emotion, and what we need to muster in order to survive the horrors life puts us through. I think Livia starts out believing that “everything happens for a reason” and by the end realizes instead that… everything happens. Not trying to introduce spoilers, but Partita has a quietly healing ending which could be unsatisfying for some but felt true to the life Livia finds herself living.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is pitch-perfect--everything I wanted Sally Rooney's Intermezzo to be, tenfold. In some ways, this reminded me of what I loved about A Little Life and Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You and The Great Believers, while still being absolutely brilliant, original, and propulsively readable. I couldn't stop reading--even though I wanted to draw out the experience of this sprawling yet intimate story.

While so often great books (Mrs. Dalloway!) are remarkable for their first sentence and how that becomes an expanding radius of sorts, this one has a final sentence that will stay with readers and make them want to experience the story all over again.

[Sarah (menace mode) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You want too much when you’re young, it’s just what you do. What we did. Made fire with so much fuel, it had to burn itself out. That is the meanest trick of memory, looking back on a day and imagining it going on and on. A dollar spent is a dollar spent. You can watch that purchase again in your mind’s eye a thousand more times, but it’s not a thousand dollars in anybody’s wallet. It’s none.” This is a fantastic ode to growing old and not living up to your own expectations, and Kingsolver does an exceptional job at making the “passionate doomed love story” the least interesting part of her complex main character’s journey. It’s the catalyst for every main event, but it’s Livia’s internal struggle with the weight of her own expectations for herself that really makes this book sing. I would give this 5 stars, but it didn’t quite ascend to Demon Copperhead levels for me so here we are. That reading playlist she assembled at the beginning though??? BANGER!!! Catch Mozart on my Spotify Wrapped this year….

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livia is a farm girl with exceptional talent who gets a university music scholarship. While at school, she meets a seemingly irresistible man and that is when her run of bad luck starts. She is injured, almost dies, and can no longer play the piano well. She goes home to Tennessee to a dying father, a cruel mother, and the memory of her beloved older brother. There are numerous musical references in the novel, including insight into the title: “A partita will never be all happy rondos, or all andantes in a minor key. You’ll usually have a prelude, a thrilling allemande, maybe a slow sexy sarabande—the contrast is the point. The parts are all different, and the artist’s work is to make them all add up to a something that feels whole.” Although her life has taken an unexpected course, she realizes that “surviving in broken parts is not such a bad thing.” Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the opportunity to review this advance copy.

[Candie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livia is living a quiet life with her husband on the family dairy farm , teaching piano, and trying to clean out her abusive hoarder mother’s house when her ex lover from college calls and asks to visit. Sigurd had been her all consuming passion . He has no idea that a tragic accident had ended her path to concert pianist as their relationship had ended just before. Now Livia must decide whether to see him as she also deals with the detritus in her family home. A brilliant story of grief, love, art and sacrifice. Kingsolver’s love of music guides the narrative but does not make it inaccessible for those with no knowledge of music. Excellent read.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC- my opinions are my

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful new novel by Barbara Kingsolver about a piano virtuoso who escaped her rural Tennessee town and a hoarder mother to attend a musical conservatory until difficult circumstances end her dream and send her back home. Now many years later her mother is dead and she's dealing with the demons of her past cleaning out the house at the same time a stranger from her past appears and requests to see her. A wonderful character driven novel.

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kingsolver is among my favorite authors and Partita is another of her keenly observed and brilliantly written works. The main character is piano prodigy and her talent is her ticket out of dysfunctional family burdened by tragic loss. Unfortunately, heartbreaking loss isn’t finished with Livia as she heads off to the illustrious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and returns forever changed.

[Madison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a character study with depth and heart, but in the context of Barbara Kingsolver's body of work it's pretty forgettable. It's a family story more than anything, and while it's satisfying and emotional, I wouldn't call it anything special.

[Katie Veitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, this book was absolutely stunning. Breathtaking emotion, character, and story. Kingsolver is the best writer of our time, I’m convinced. An absolute masterpiece in the understanding of the beauty of human nature.

[Leonie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arguably the weakest Kingsolver I’ve read. Fragmented at best, the threads didn’t quite hold together. I’m sorry to say I didn’t connect with the character, and for me the devices used ended up interrupting the flow of the story, leading to me skimming huge sections. 2.5, rounded up

[Carol Scheherazade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit dry and boring. Hard to engage which I found strange as it’s billed as a love story. Felt superficial. I was disappointed.

[Joceline Foley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slow burn, but it’s worth sticking with it until the end.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livia is a supremely talented musician, attending university on a scholarship and on track to become a concert pianist. The piano has been her ticket to escape her dismal small town upbringing. Then a passionate love affair with a politically active labor organizer leads to the destruction of her mental and physical health. The story is told in two timelines: Liv in the present, a piano teacher to farm kids and local adults, and Liv in the past, as she explores her talent and her freedom. The past and present collide when her lover reaches out in a phone call, causing her to question the life she has carefully rebuilt. Kingsolver explores themes of passion, class, the artist's life, and community while keeping the reader enthralled. Unforgettable. Kingsolver includes a classical playlist

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!


Thank you Edelweiss for the review copy. Such an honor.