What do you think?
Rate this book
Rhythm: A Novel
Meet teenage drummer Jane Bowman. She’s fifteen, funny, and wounded by the loss of her famous percussionist mother. Robin Meloy Goldsby’s touching and humorous coming-of-age musical odyssey invites us to tap our toes in time to Jane’s powerful music—cheering her on as she mends her shattered heart, finds her groove, and discovers the tragic beauty of human resilience. “Goldsby, who marries the pathos of her plot line with the whimsy and near-magical-realism of her characters, deserves comparison with John Irving, a modern master.”
Marion Winik, NPR commentator and author of First Comes Love “Rhythm conveys the magic of sound plus the transformative power of music, and the words—like a well-played melody—ring true.”
Peter Erskine, drummer and author of Time Awareness for All Musicians
Marion Winik, NPR commentator and author of First Comes Love “Rhythm conveys the magic of sound plus the transformative power of music, and the words—like a well-played melody—ring true.”
Peter Erskine, drummer and author of Time Awareness for All Musicians
- GenresFiction
328 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2008
About the author
Robin Meloy Goldsby
6 books16 followers"Goldsby has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for the absurd—big-hearted, funny, truly eye-opening memoir."
Publishers Weekly Starred Review of Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Love, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian.
"Goldsby has seen it all from her piano and she dishes it up with a true storyteller's gusto. As refreshing as a frozen daiquiri." Jeff Yanc, Book Sense Picks and Notables
Robin Meloy Goldsby's first book, Piano Girl: A Memoir, made its hardcover debut in spring, 2005. The book presents a collection of autobiographical short stories--some funny, some poignant--that explore the life of a working musician.
Piano Girl Playbook: Notes on a Musical Life is the long awaited follow-up to Piano Girl. Goldsby's back catalog includes Rhythm: A Novel; Waltz of the Asparagus People: The Further Adventures of Piano Girl; and Manhattan Road Trip: Short Stories. Fragile, feisty, courageous, but sometimes just plain world-weary, Goldsby’s unbreakable protagonists push aside little injustices, dodge the slings and arrows of their tone-deaf neighbors, and keep playing the music they love.
Fodder for Goldsby's literary musings, Robin Meloy Goldsby's solo piano career has taken her from Pittsburgh’s roadside dives to posh New York City venues and exclusive resorts, and on to the European castles and concert stages where she now performs. A Steinway Artist, she has eight solo piano recordings to her name and has appeared in the USA on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland.
Currently, Robin is the featured pianist at the Excelsior Hotel Ernst in Cologne, Germany. Her quiet, elegant solo-piano music is popular on streaming platforms, with over 160 million streams in the USA alone.
Ms. Goldsby often serves as a cultural ambassador for European organizations dedicated to transatlantic relations. In November 2017, she presented her Home and Away program at Buckingham Palace for HRH, the Prince of Wales. She has performed her original music for German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Atlantik Brücke, e.V ); for numerous U.S. Consulates and Embassies in Europe; for Amerika Haus, e.V. NRW; for Steinway in New York, Berlin, Oslo, Düsseldorf, and Vienna; and for the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO) worldwide. In 2014 Goldsby and her daughter, Julia, wrote and performed the theme song, “Maybe It’s You,” for the NGO International Women’s Forum at the United Nations in Geneva.
Robin is married to jazz bassist John Goldsby. They have two adult children, and live near Cologne Germany.
Publishers Weekly Starred Review of Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Love, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian.
"Goldsby has seen it all from her piano and she dishes it up with a true storyteller's gusto. As refreshing as a frozen daiquiri." Jeff Yanc, Book Sense Picks and Notables
Robin Meloy Goldsby's first book, Piano Girl: A Memoir, made its hardcover debut in spring, 2005. The book presents a collection of autobiographical short stories--some funny, some poignant--that explore the life of a working musician.
Piano Girl Playbook: Notes on a Musical Life is the long awaited follow-up to Piano Girl. Goldsby's back catalog includes Rhythm: A Novel; Waltz of the Asparagus People: The Further Adventures of Piano Girl; and Manhattan Road Trip: Short Stories. Fragile, feisty, courageous, but sometimes just plain world-weary, Goldsby’s unbreakable protagonists push aside little injustices, dodge the slings and arrows of their tone-deaf neighbors, and keep playing the music they love.
Fodder for Goldsby's literary musings, Robin Meloy Goldsby's solo piano career has taken her from Pittsburgh’s roadside dives to posh New York City venues and exclusive resorts, and on to the European castles and concert stages where she now performs. A Steinway Artist, she has eight solo piano recordings to her name and has appeared in the USA on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland.
Currently, Robin is the featured pianist at the Excelsior Hotel Ernst in Cologne, Germany. Her quiet, elegant solo-piano music is popular on streaming platforms, with over 160 million streams in the USA alone.
Ms. Goldsby often serves as a cultural ambassador for European organizations dedicated to transatlantic relations. In November 2017, she presented her Home and Away program at Buckingham Palace for HRH, the Prince of Wales. She has performed her original music for German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Atlantik Brücke, e.V ); for numerous U.S. Consulates and Embassies in Europe; for Amerika Haus, e.V. NRW; for Steinway in New York, Berlin, Oslo, Düsseldorf, and Vienna; and for the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO) worldwide. In 2014 Goldsby and her daughter, Julia, wrote and performed the theme song, “Maybe It’s You,” for the NGO International Women’s Forum at the United Nations in Geneva.
Robin is married to jazz bassist John Goldsby. They have two adult children, and live near Cologne Germany.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 18, 2008
Goldsby’s Words Flow Like Well-Written Lyrics
I am so pleased to offer a RAVE review for Rhythm, a novel by talented writer and exceptional musician, Robin Meloy Goldsby. Having first read an excerpt from this work during the Amazon Shorts contest earlier this year, I knew it was something I would eagerly read in its entirety. Unwilling to put it down from the minute I opened it, this book not only didn’t disappoint, but it also exceeded my expectations for three distinct reasons: Lyrical prose, extremely well-drawn characters—both primary and secondary—and a captivating story.
This is the story of Jane—“Jane Bowman, drums.” We meet her at an early age and find her instantly loveable and sympathetic. She is the daughter of a famous percussionist, Helen Bowman, (a “heavy-hitting, Latin-jazz ‘congera’ ”) and a notorious grandmother, Isabella, known as the “Mistress of Mambo.” Drums are in Jane’s blood. Appropriately titled, “Rhythm,” the beat of this story is instantly apparent: It’s the beat of Jane’s heart as she makes her way through life after tragically losing her mother in a nightclub fire.
Goldsby, an accomplished pianist and recording artist, has done her research. You’ll have a front row seat for the jazzy undertones in the language--so much that you may even be able to hear the tunes as you read. Comical background characters like Mary One and Mary Two, along with Jane’s best friend Leo, keep Jane real. Her father and Grandpa Jack offer loving support and then there’s also Olivia Blue. When her story comes to the forefront it brought me to tears.
Well done, well done, well done. Five stars all the way and I highly recommend this work.
I am so pleased to offer a RAVE review for Rhythm, a novel by talented writer and exceptional musician, Robin Meloy Goldsby. Having first read an excerpt from this work during the Amazon Shorts contest earlier this year, I knew it was something I would eagerly read in its entirety. Unwilling to put it down from the minute I opened it, this book not only didn’t disappoint, but it also exceeded my expectations for three distinct reasons: Lyrical prose, extremely well-drawn characters—both primary and secondary—and a captivating story.
This is the story of Jane—“Jane Bowman, drums.” We meet her at an early age and find her instantly loveable and sympathetic. She is the daughter of a famous percussionist, Helen Bowman, (a “heavy-hitting, Latin-jazz ‘congera’ ”) and a notorious grandmother, Isabella, known as the “Mistress of Mambo.” Drums are in Jane’s blood. Appropriately titled, “Rhythm,” the beat of this story is instantly apparent: It’s the beat of Jane’s heart as she makes her way through life after tragically losing her mother in a nightclub fire.
Goldsby, an accomplished pianist and recording artist, has done her research. You’ll have a front row seat for the jazzy undertones in the language--so much that you may even be able to hear the tunes as you read. Comical background characters like Mary One and Mary Two, along with Jane’s best friend Leo, keep Jane real. Her father and Grandpa Jack offer loving support and then there’s also Olivia Blue. When her story comes to the forefront it brought me to tears.
Well done, well done, well done. Five stars all the way and I highly recommend this work.
November 10, 2008
Here's the Kirkus Discovery review of my book RHYTHM. I hope some of you will check it out.
Robin Meloy Goldsby
RHYTHM: A Novel
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9939-9
A coming-of-age novel about a teenage musician grappling with love and loss.
At 15, Jane Bowman has yet to emotionally process the fiery death of her mother, a famed Latin-jazz percussionist who perished three years prior in the nightclub where she was performing. Jane lives in tony Sewickley Heights, Pa., with her novelist father Sam and two outspoken housekeepers (“Mary One and Mary Two”) and forces herself to practice drumming, though the pastime reminds her too much of her beloved mother. At private school, Jane pals around with gay childhood friend Leo, but mostly keeps to herself, struggling with abandonment issues and weighty emotions always simmering just beneath the surface of her gruff, tomboyish exterior. Leo introduces her to Olivia Blue, a seasoned music teacher at a school for delinquent boys, hoping to stimulate Jane’s love for music. Their meeting stimulates Olivia to recruit Jane as the newest lead drummer of her school’s Allegheny Gatehouse Band, but it also ignites a romance between Olivia and Sam. After graduation, Jane heads to New York City, where her career as a percussionist blossoms with an eventful but short-lived stint with all-girl band Sisterhood of Soul, along with some heady sexual experimentation. The death of her grandparents creates a windfall of inherited wealth for Jane, but she manages to keep her bearings even in the midst of an opportunity to play with vulgar, cantankerous R&B star Bobby Angel. Love hits hard with a man from Jane’s past and the development of her own group nicely buoys the melodramatic denouement. Goldsby’s first novel (after her 2005 memoir Piano Girl), spans 15 years in the life of her gritty, resilient protagonist and
is told with lyrical prose and deft characterization.
Well-written, sympathetically earnest fiction.
Robin Meloy Goldsby
RHYTHM: A Novel
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9939-9
A coming-of-age novel about a teenage musician grappling with love and loss.
At 15, Jane Bowman has yet to emotionally process the fiery death of her mother, a famed Latin-jazz percussionist who perished three years prior in the nightclub where she was performing. Jane lives in tony Sewickley Heights, Pa., with her novelist father Sam and two outspoken housekeepers (“Mary One and Mary Two”) and forces herself to practice drumming, though the pastime reminds her too much of her beloved mother. At private school, Jane pals around with gay childhood friend Leo, but mostly keeps to herself, struggling with abandonment issues and weighty emotions always simmering just beneath the surface of her gruff, tomboyish exterior. Leo introduces her to Olivia Blue, a seasoned music teacher at a school for delinquent boys, hoping to stimulate Jane’s love for music. Their meeting stimulates Olivia to recruit Jane as the newest lead drummer of her school’s Allegheny Gatehouse Band, but it also ignites a romance between Olivia and Sam. After graduation, Jane heads to New York City, where her career as a percussionist blossoms with an eventful but short-lived stint with all-girl band Sisterhood of Soul, along with some heady sexual experimentation. The death of her grandparents creates a windfall of inherited wealth for Jane, but she manages to keep her bearings even in the midst of an opportunity to play with vulgar, cantankerous R&B star Bobby Angel. Love hits hard with a man from Jane’s past and the development of her own group nicely buoys the melodramatic denouement. Goldsby’s first novel (after her 2005 memoir Piano Girl), spans 15 years in the life of her gritty, resilient protagonist and
is told with lyrical prose and deft characterization.
Well-written, sympathetically earnest fiction.
May 4, 2015
Did not see the ending coming! I wouldn't characterize this as a coming of age novel, as we follow drummer Jane from age 12 through through her adulthood. My only real issue was that I would have liked to know more about Franklin and what made him so special to Jane. We get to know her friend Leo much better. Anyway, I highly recommend this novel. The lady knows music and people. Stop. Breathe. Focus...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews