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, Music, Contemporary, Historical, Book Club

349 pages, Kindle Edition

First published 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]

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]

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

[Ron Charles]

To say it’s no Demon Copperhead hardly seems fair.

But that’s the unenviable starting point for Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Partita. One squints to read it in the glaring light of its predecessor.

Trailing clouds of glory from Charles Dickens’s classic, Demon Copperhead lounged for more than a year on the bestseller list in hardback, eventually dominated the paperback list, sold more than 3 million copies, and won a Pulitzer Prize. It was a worldwide literary event that pitted an army of enthusiastic devotees (like me) against a minority who found the novel’s relentless suffering overcooked or unbearable.

Partita is less likely to inspire such fervor. The emotional volume is softer, the range narrower, the social agenda more flyer than billboard.

Musicians will recognize that title while the rest of us are still pondering its pronunciation. About 100 pages in, the narrator explains that a partita is “a composition made of a lot of parts with different paces and moods.” Not coincidentally, that’s a fair description of this novel, which sweeps from quiet retrospection to full-throated romance and bloody crises.

Kingsolver, who went to college on a piano scholarship, lays tracks of classical music throughout the story. Its chapters are titled “Overture,” “Prelude I,” “Toccata,” etc. Her descriptions of agonizing rehearsals and triumphant concerts are engrossing, even for those of us who never tinkled the ivories past “Volga Boatmen.” And the truly devoted can....

Read the rest of this review on my Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/bar...

[Stephen the Bookworm]

" No, I mean we all accumulate. Not junk but feelings. We hold onto stuff we'd be better off letting go of."

Livia Bohusz has a talent for music- playing the piano - and after the tragic death of her brother when she was ten, she has lived in the shadow of the event. But a chance to leave her rural home and the family farm and go and study music is an opportunity that she to pursue ; to leave the mother who always pulls her back.

The future for Livia does not go as planned when she meets a slightly older man named Sigurd who allows her to build dreams and embrace a new self. She is hypnotised by him.

But the path to independence, a musical career and life of love as well as building a new identity does not succeed as two events rip her life into pieces.

But why Partita? A musical composition made up of a suite of distinct contrasting dances : The Prelude; The Allemande; The Courante; The Sarabande and The Gigue. Livia's life reflects these different elements - fractured, broken and rebuilt - the composition of life.

Barbara Kingsolver knows how to take you on a journey into the human condition; never quite knowing where events may lead . The first third of the book didn't grab me as Livia's college life and initial foray into a heart-pounding new romance seemed familiar to other books but as the implications of the choices she makes ;the reasons behind her brothers' death and her parents' lack of connection with her and the reconciliation with the past and a new unexpected future are explored then the novel takes off and becomes very special The last quarter ( no spoiler) becomes a ..No, don't do it !"

Along with Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, Barbara Kingsolver is one of America's finest novelist and exports.

4.5 out of 5

Thank you to Faber and Faber and NetGalley for the advance copy for an honest and unbiased review.

Quotes:
"Life doesn't give you more than one drink of water. If it gives you a drink at all."
"Everyone of our times had its own composition, so particular, that I could memorise it and play it to myself afterward.

[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.

[Cherie]

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.

[Bruce Katz]

In interviews Barbara Kingsolver has given on the release of her new book, “Partita,” she speaks of the severe writer’s block she experienced after the publication of her book “Demon Copperhead.” She had ideas for a new project but couldn’t shake the thoughts that were holding her back.

One day she came upon a post on Substack titled “Barbara Kingsolver is a Fraud.” Kingsolver had encountered that charge before — had even wrestled with the possibility herself — so she clicked on the link out of curiosity. What she read infuriated her: “The writer of the post ‘had done her Wiki research,’ she recalls. ‘She had read my dad was a doctor, so obviously I had to be in the country-club set. What would I know about working-class people? And I went to college on a piano scholarship, but how could any working-class person ever play classical piano? That pissed me off.’“ (The New Yorker, September 21, 2026)

As a child, Kingsolver lived in a small town in Kentucky. Her father was indeed a doctor but he worked in an economically depressed region of the state, earning little money. When Kingsolver was seven years old, her father took the family to Africa (the experience provided material for "Poisonwood Bible"). Later, she went to to study classical piano at DePauw University in Indiana on a music scholarship. Her life took her in another direction after that, of course, but all of this life experience stayed with Kingsolver. Thinking about the Substack article made her want, as she out it, to “interrogate” the "snooty" idea that a person from a small rural town “couldn’t possibly have fallen in love with playing the piano.” “Partita” (the word is a musical term) is the product of that interrogation.

Lydia Cable (née Bohusz), the book’s protagonist, had a terrible childhood. Cold mother, distant father, corporal punishment, very limited financial resources, but most dramatically this: One night when she was young, her brother Cy committed suicide. There's been no warning, no explanation: he simply stepped in front of a train and took himself out of her life.

Except that he really wasn’t gone; he was never gone at all. The trauma stayed with her.

“It was a long time ago," Lydia thinks. "People say that as a comfort, as if the broken-glass edges of our damage get worn down by years. And in the meantime, you do what? Stare at the train wreck, pick at the scar, play the scorching memory over and over like a hard piano passage you’re determined to memorize, trying to dull the cutting edge.”

Lydia and Cy grew up on a farm in a rural, working class part of east Tennessee. To say her mother was cold to her would be an understatement. Indeed, Lydia spent years of her life wondering what she had done to make her mother loathe her. As early as I could recall knowing grown-ups had their own feelings, I recalled the sense of this loathing of hers like a pressure against my skin. She hated cooking, laundering, serving. And I’d still yet grown up watching her do all those things with her broad back turned to me like a “No Trespassing” sign. Her anger at her mother (like her sadness and anger at her brother's suicide) weighs on her still, casts dark shadows on everything she does. Her father was there and might have been more forthcoming but, intimidated by her mom, he doted on his dog, his love for his children “always in sight but out of earshot.”

The single joy in Lydia’s life — the one thing that took her away from the soul-killing air of home — was music. From an early age, she had a talent for the piano. She played at churches and school, and even with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Upon graduating from high school she was awarded a scholarship to a prestigious university music program and eagerly left home. Adapting to her new life was difficult. Her clothing, mannerisms, and Tennessee accent drew the wrong kind of attention. She felt out of place, isolated: “The campus was a place of inscrutable rules and people who wore deliberately torn jeans but smirked at a girl in thrift-store clothes.” And so she worked as hard on “training my clever ear on new vowels and inflection” and demeanor as she did on her music. In time she was able to “pass.”

Eventually Lydia’s musical gifts are recognized. She submerges herself in perfecting her craft, choosing as her selection for an important competition Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit," a work so difficult even its composer couldn’t play it. The future she had long dreamed of now seems possible.

Then she falls in love. With a man entirely unlike her she discovers a kind of passion she’d never imagined before. Their affair sets off a chain of events that end her dream of concert halls. And almost kill her.

“Partita” jumps back and forth between past and present: Lydia’s childhood, her university years, the affair, her recovery from “three deaths,” the deaths of her parents, and finally having to clear out the home left to her by her mother, a hoarder (a challenge as daunting as the one faced by Hercules with the Augean stables:” trash bags full of compulsively retained receipts, empty boxes of raisin brans, sewing patterns, gifts). In the midst of this already fraught time Lydia suddenly hears from her old lover and is forced to think about the choices and decisions she's made in her life.

Several people we meet in the book are living in the aftermath of shattered dreams: Lydia’s loss of her career as a classical pianist, her old lover’s dream of social revolution, dreams Lydia never knew about. Her husband’s loss of a leg. Some of these people are broken by the disappointment, others overcome it. The question is everywhere in the novel: what do we do when all we ever dreamt of, all we thought we are and would be, is suddenly taken away from us? When we are forced to become a new, different person. (Kingsolver even throws in a passing reference to the opening line in Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem:” “What happens to a dream deferred?”.)

One of Kingsolver’s greatest gifts is her ability to draw the reader into the complexities of her characters as emotional beings. She brings us into their interior worlds, inviting us to judge them as we like, to wonder what we would do in similar circumstances. Lydia’s reactions to the people and events of her life are vividly portrayed: the way she wrestles with feelings of guilt and anger (“We roll out anger as a bandage to stanch the bleeding of loss.”), how much she has internalized her mother’s criticism (“What if I’d made this bed myself? I tried to fly too close to the sun. And failed. As she said I would"), the hatred she still bears for her mother. Sometimes we admire Lydia. Sometimes we feel sorry for her. Sometimes we rather dislike her. All of which means she is a fully drawn, complex character whose story we can care about.

Kingsolver’s love — and knowledge — of music is evident everywhere in the novel. Music, she says, is a universal language, understood by both body and mind, by even the youngest child. She describes playing piano in various local churches as “using my hands to spin soul from the straw of our hard conditions.” The finale of Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor,” she writes, “stands with its angel hands on your shoulder blades, backing up all the weariness you were feeling, and promises you light at the end of the tunnel. Forever. Endless mercy. Eternal rest.”

(One can find examples of this kind of evocative imagery everywhere in the novel. One passage was so vivid that I had to highlight it and jot it down in a notebook: “Through the soles of my shoes I could feel acorns rolling like marbles underfoot. This summer would die soon. The goldenrod would bow down and acorns would cover the ground and a golden time would fold into itself again like a tablecloth waiting for the next banquet.”

She responds to her Substack critic by showing the importance of music in the lives of her Appalachian neighbors — their instrument playing, paying for their child’s piano lessons even though they couldn’t truly afford it, even though they were strapped for the money they needed to pay for a child’s medical care (“They needed their music too, I guess. In whatever world was coming to them, they’d have Mozart and Beethoven.”). By capturing too their dignity and generosity. Some passages read like they came from personal experience: “I live among people who might have been up before dawn with a sick calf, or have hay to mow before rain gets here; they might work mornings at the dollar store and nights cleaning floors at the hospital and have to pick up their kids from school in between. Or take somebody to a court date. They might like you lot or very little. No matter.”

I’m no music scholar, not even close, so I can’t comment on how the musical term partita works in shaping the narrative, the shape of the book. But I can see evidence of the author’s heart everywhere in the book. Of her love of music, people. Of language. Readers will find much to enjoy, think, and talk about in this novel.

My thanks to Harper Collins and Edelweis+ for providing an digital ARC in return for an honest review.

[Stephanie]

Inject this into my veins.

Barbara Kingsolver, who has written two of my favorite books of all time: Demon Copperhead, and The Poisonwood Bible, this time dives into the world of music and literature, as the two are forever intertwined.

Well, music is the basis of this book, is centers around Livia Cable, who is a piano prodigy, and goes back-and-forth with her tumultuous past and her present passion for music. What sets forth in her life are tragic circumstances from her past that need to be reckoned with.

“I’d hit it lucky on the weather, no wind at all, clear sky, a perfect end-of-summer day. Perfectly empty or perfectly full, depending on whether you measure a day by clouds or birdsongs”

There moments of complete beauty, as only Kingsolver fans can only truly understand. The stories pacing goes back-and-forth, and there are times where I wasn’t sure whether we were in the present or the past, though I feel like that was her intentions, similar as to music - as there is no past or present when you listen to it.

While this isn’t going to be a classic, I will read everything she reads and can’t wait to see what she does next.

[Tammy]

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.

[aleksandra]

dnf 37%

Very, very unfortunately, I'm not feeling this book at all. I genuinely believed I would devour this story in almost one sitting, as I'm in the mood for music-centered stories, but I felt no connection to the characters, nor did I care enough to continue to find out the reason why the two mcs parted their ways.

[Jules]

I hear a lot of writers talking about pulling their readers in with the very first sentence of a book. Barbara Kingsolver absolutely killed it with her opening line, quite literally. I was instantly hooked.

In Partita, Livia turns to music following the death of her brother when she is just 11 years old. Her relationship with her mother becomes strained, not only due to grief but also because her mother is unable to understand how music is ever going to give Livia a future. Defiant, Livia earns a scholarship but needs to work part time jobs to make ends meet. One day, a completely unforeseeable event forces her to face an uncertain and unexpected future.

I have to admit to being initially unsure about Partita, probably for about the first third of the book. I looked up the meaning of partita and in a classical musical sense, it means "a suite of dances, usually written for a solo instrument". In Kingsolver's novel, Livia is a pianist and I struggled a little with the technical musical elements in that first third of the book. However, should you find your reading of Partita to be similar to mine, please do stick with it as I really do think it comes into it's own later on.

I am a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver. She has such a natural way with words, talking about love and human experience with great fervour. I also follow Kingsolver on Instagram and therefore know her stance on some of the political elements going on in America right now. Like in Demon Copperhead, she brings these elements into her novels and, in Partita, she deals with these sensitively and with compassion.

Livia's life beyond music is ultimately what turned this into a 5 star read for me. Partita is a novel that shows that, despite all that life throws at you, our resilience can almost be super human - stretching beyond grief, pain and loss, and finding a way to love, happiness and forgiveness. A truly exceptional novel.

[Kelley Dykes]

I never thought the day would come that I would DNF a Barbara kingsolver book. Usually they are my epic favorites. This one I made it halfway after weeks of trying to push through it. It just bored me and I could not feel for the characters. I think the lengthy descriptions of musical technicalities really made it hard to wade through.

[Ryan Davison]

https://www.washingtonindependentrevi...

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper for a review copy

[Kari Ann Sweeney]

HEADLINE: Barbara Kingsolver Is Damn Good at Her Job

“ 𝘕𝘰, 𝘐 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘬 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴. 𝘞𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘧𝘧 𝘸𝘦’𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘰 𝘰𝘧.”

Masterclass writing with precision and intention
Captivating story about life and art
Fully formed characters
Reflections on ambition and resilience
Music metaphors to life are moving and accessible

The writing is so darn beautiful. Like I said- masterclass.

“𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘺.”

READ: Mostly on audio with stolen moments in print because I was engrossed. I thought Megan Tusing’s narration captured Livia’s voice perfectly. I could see her vividly.

[Diana]

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’ve read almost all of Kingsolver’s books and she is still very capable of surprising me.

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, bcause I cared so much about this character, because of the vivid writing, and-- 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, too. 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.

[Sophie Gledstone]

Having read three quarters of this sitting in the sun today (I’m very sunburnt) I’m actually at a loss for words. Shed a lot of tears. Genuinely a 4.5 star read - loses half a star for the first quarter being rather slow soz Barbs x

[Shantha (ShanthasBookEra)]

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Demon Copperhead, a story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty."

"A partita is a musical composition consisting of a series of dance movements or a set of variations, typically written for a solo instrument." The story is told in dual timeline alternating between past and present of piano prodigy Livia Cable. Each chapter title is named after a musical movement: Overture, Allemande, Toccata, Sarabande, Fugue, Pathetique, Da Capo and Al Fine. We are taken through the highs and lows of Livia's life. The tragedy, heartbreak, joy and triumph flow through the novel like a classical composition. The accompanying playlist brilliantly mirrors the bass and treble notes of Livia's life.

Livia grows up in a dysfunctional family defined by trauma. At eighteen, she leaves home for the refuge of music school on a full scholarship. While there, she thrives as a pianist and meets her first love who alters the course of her life. In the present, he has contacted her and asks that they meet. She asks for time to consider his request. What follows is a beautiful, engaging story about a young woman who is exceptionally talented, experiences heartbreak and tragedy and through her resilience, overcomes, adapts and ultimately soars.

How does an author follow up a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel with brilliant social commentary such as Demon Copperhead? With a masterpiece like Partita. The musical analogies to life are moving and beautiful. I was captivated from the first note to the last. It explores ambition, talent, loss, romantic and familial connection, resilience and much more. I absolutely loved this book! I have played the violin off and on since childhood but I don't think you need any musical knowledge to love this story. It is ultimately, an exploration of the human condition. In Partita, Barbara Kingsolver soars to new heights as her talent as a pianist and a novelist merge. Highly recommend this book. It is definitely one of my favorite books of the year.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Harper Books, and Barbara Kingsolver for the gifted advance reader's copy and finished copy. All opinions are my own.

[Novel Visits]

PARTITA by Barbara Kingsolver⁣
⁣
I haven’t read every single book Barbara Kingsolver has written, but I’ve read most of them and have loved all to varying degrees. Happily, Partita is another book I can add to that list, but I’ll be honest, I wasn’t so sure about that as the book began.⁣
⁣
Partita is the story of Livia, an incredible piano prodigy, who through her own passion, grit and determination wins a scholarship to a highly regarded music conservatory. There she’s able to truly come into her own talent, and leave her home life behind. She also meets a man who will have a profound effect on her life in only a few short months.⁣
⁣
Kingsolver tells Livia’s story in alternating timelines of her dramatic past and her present life in a place she never dreamed she’d end up. There’s A LOT of music, specifically classical music vocabulary, in this book, particularly in the first half. Never having been all that familiar with classical music, I found myself looking up terms over and over. I was reading on a Kindle, so that was easy, but it also became distracting to the bigger story and I couldn’t help wondering, “Why so much?” Dare I say? – It felt a little showy. Thankfully, the deeper the story went, and the bigger it grew, musical references played an increasingly smaller role.⁣
⁣
Partita really took off for me as it neared the second half. By then Kingsolver had worked her magic and made me fall in love with yet another of her characters. The life she built for Livia felt so real in both its shocking moments and even more so in its quiet ones. I found myself growing so fond of the kind, steady people who populated Livia’s life. The book’s ending was unexpected, but also not. It was perfect. As I finished its last pages, I cared little about my earlier struggles. Partita is truly a beautiful story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫⁣
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📕Thanks to @harperbooks for an electronic copy of this book.⁣

[Bob]

Barbara KIngsolver like the best composers has a created a beautiful composition of prose and story inPartita. Livia was once an up and coming classical pianist who is now giving piano lessons to half-interested high schoolers. One day she recieves a letter from her former lover from college, Sigurd. Livia is stunned because of their break-up. Sigurd's letter brings back her musical aspirations and what caused her to leave them behind. Kingsolver does something different here then other stories that I've about musicians which is that she gets into their heart and soul. Livia is inspired by family tragedy and the passion she gains from Sigurd. One theme that I found fascinating is the politics among musicians with their ideals on what makes a musician and how they distanced themselves from nonmusicans on campus. The love scenes between Livia and Sigurd are refreshingly sensual and their banter is intelligent and witty. The story is beautifully paced between flashbacks and the narrative is rich and satisfying. Don't worry if you don't listen to or knowledge about classical music, because KIngsolver's latest isn't about classical music, but how music heals, inspires, and soothes the soul.

[Aggie]

Sometimes life absolutely trashes you, and you're never going to be 100% the same person again. But honestly? The coolest, bravest thing about humans is that we pick up the pieces and keep pushing forward anyway.

Reading Barbara Kingsolver is pure joy. Her words remind me that even if life turns out ordinary- and even if you look older and more weary than most- as long as your heart is beating, you are still surviving.

♥♥ This audiobook made me hear some words so poignant they reached my heart, slowing its pace to a gentle, quiet calm. ♥♥

[Madison]

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.

[Leonie]

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

[Rick B]

When Kingsolver has a book coming out I always get excited to read it as she is one of thee best authors today. While this wasn’t my favorite Kingsolver book I did enjoy it. A bit heavy on numerous classical music terms (partita being one of them), i did find myself
googling many in order to understand parts better. This novel had a lot of stories going on which all interested me. A piano student and her intense training, tragedy, a crushing breakup, suicide, a horrible mother, a loving father, an understanding husband, and his family. It’s amazing Livia survives. The novel also goes back and forth fairly regularly. From the 1980s when Livia is a music student, to current time, as a married woman living on a farm. There was a “lull” there for a bit, but stick with it. There comes a point where the book takes off and became a page turner for me right to the end. Livia explains that a partita is made up of different movements with different moods. The movements don’t all sound alike, but together they make a whole. This is Livia’s life. It makes for the perfect title for this book. Well worth the read ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Jude (HeyJudeReads) Fricano]

thank you @faberbooks and @netgalley for this advance readers' copy of:

Partita by Barbara Kingsolver
out 10.6.26

five stars

This moving, emotional, dual timeline story was a balance of reflection, emotion, connection and place. The characters were relatable and the story takes the reader down a path where you're unsure where things will land, yet we know Kingsolver will deliver the most satisfying delight of a story by the end!

Description: "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.

[devon marie]

This book was hard for me to rate. For the first half or two-thirds, easily, I struggled. And I am surprised by that, because on paper I should have LOVED everything about this book's setup. Livia is a music student at IU on a piano scholarship. She comes from small town USA and had to focus almost exclusively on piano growing up to stand a chance at getting into a school on scholarship, which is the only way she'd be able to afford attending. Swap the instrument and the school for another Indiana university and you have me (except I had parents more like Charlie's, thankfully). The book is crammed with music, the music I love; the kind of music that has always, to me, felt like it existed somewhere above us and we merely brush against its greatness once in a while.

But when she gets to IU... she loses her mind over a boy and is generally just an insufferable wretch of a protagonist. I am not sure if we were supposed to sympathize with her but I pretty resolutely did not. She was naive, and rude, and belittling, and immature. She flopped around and moped instead of taking any agency over her life. Sigurd came off the more likeable of the two and I am not sure whether or not that was the point. The chapters of her disastrous last summer at IU were agonizing to read and I dragged it out for weeks. I don't want to get into spoilers of the plot but the "horrible thing that happened to her" was a huge disappointment for me, plotwise, because why are our stories always this, in some way?

But then Barbara Kingsolver does her thing where she wallops you over the head with such a heartfelt and emotionally satisfying ending that had me put down my e-reader and just hold my head in my hands and now how do I rate this book?

If you can get past Livia at her worst, Livia at her best is wonderful and the ending of the book so, so poignant. But Livia at her worst is pretty genuinely awful.

[Dee Furey]

This is my second Barbara Kingsolver novel. I know she has so many, and I am behind on reading her. I was not a fan of Demon Copperhead, and I know it is well loved, so I definitely wanted to read another Barbara Kingsolver novel so I requested Partita. I am very grateful to Net Galley and Harper for letting me read the e-arc. I loved this book. This is a coming of age novel combined with generational trauma and a messy, complicated mother/daughter relationship. Our female main character, Livia, is a gifted pianist. No one understands her passion except her brother, and when he leaves them, it is just her. Just her. She goes away to school and is a conservatory student and she is brilliant and she burns with a passion, and she falls in love.. Things do not go according to her life's plan, and the life she lives is much different than the one she had imagined. This was so good. Thank you Net Galley and Harper. This book came out October 6th.

[Lori Dickinson Black]

Just a beautiful story that captures two timelines and some of the most illustrative descriptions of music. I can’t wait for everyone to read to talk about it more. It’s an easier read than Demon Copperhead, but just as impactful. Bravo!!

[Marjorie]

5-star rating isn't enough.

[Kenzie | kenzienoelle.reads]

IG review: https://www.instagram.com/p/DeHSvkzm9...

A partita is “…a composition made of a lot of parts with different paces and moods.” Livia Bohusz is a pianist. This story is the partita of her life. We flow through the bass of pain, of hatred and of loving and losing and being lost. We move through the trebles of recovering, of finding life again and of hope.

This writing, oh my goodness Barbara Kingsolver. It kept me so totally engaged in the story even when I wasn’t interested in what was happening. There was so much foreshadowing of things to come in the early chapters that I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

The story itself purely as a story wasn’t completely for me. I completely lost interest whenever Sigurd started talking about his Marxism/Socialism🫣I don’t want to go into spoilers but there were some storylines that I didn’t love (feel free to DM for any content warnings!) But after sitting with it for a couple days, I know this is a story that will stick with me and like I mentioned the writing just takes this to a whole other level.

I was afraid that this book was just going to stay in the absolute depression that most of it was but I’m so happy with how the author decided to conclude this story… Livia’s story.

I played the piano for many years and now my trophies sit in an attic and I haven’t played in many, many years. I loved YouTubing the many songs mentioned and my mind was BLOWN watching Gaspard de la Nuit being played! Unreal.

Thank you Harper Books for the gifted book!