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Goldberg Variations, The
Nancy Huston’s The Goldberg Variations, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Translation, echoes Bach’s Variations in its structure and rhythms, and ultimately, its irony. "Suppose you invite thirty people to your home, people whom you love or have loved, to listen to you perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations. And say that this concert unfolds like a midsummer night’s dream, that is, you, Liliane, succeed in vibrating thirty people like so many variations, each at a different tune — you must oscillate between memory and speculation; you must, above all, master your fears — maybe then, all these fragments of music would dance into the same stream, and that you would call The Goldberg Variations, a novel."—Nancy Huston
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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155 people want to read
About the author
Nancy Huston
115 books314 followers(from Wikipedia)
Huston lived in Calgary until age fifteen, at which time her family moved to Wilton, New Hampshire, USA. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she was given the opportunity to spend a year of her studies in Paris. Arriving in Paris in 1973, Huston obtained a Master's Degree from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, writing a thesis on swear words under the supervision of Roland Barthes.
(Actes Sud)
Née à Calgary (Canada), Nancy Huston, qui vit à Paris, a publié de nombreux romans et essais chez Actes Sud et chez Leméac, parmi lesquels Instruments des ténèbres (1996, prix Goncourt des lycéens et prix du livre Inter), L'empreinte de l'ange (1998, grand prix des lectrices de ElleJ et Lignes de faille (2006, prix Femina).
Huston lived in Calgary until age fifteen, at which time her family moved to Wilton, New Hampshire, USA. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she was given the opportunity to spend a year of her studies in Paris. Arriving in Paris in 1973, Huston obtained a Master's Degree from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, writing a thesis on swear words under the supervision of Roland Barthes.
(Actes Sud)
Née à Calgary (Canada), Nancy Huston, qui vit à Paris, a publié de nombreux romans et essais chez Actes Sud et chez Leméac, parmi lesquels Instruments des ténèbres (1996, prix Goncourt des lycéens et prix du livre Inter), L'empreinte de l'ange (1998, grand prix des lectrices de ElleJ et Lignes de faille (2006, prix Femina).
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 19, 2016
Rarely are we transfixed.
Interested, diverted, intrigued, focused -- but transfixed, to the point where all else fades and our attention rests exclusively -- no, not often at all. We may spend hundreds of dollars on a night of entertainment; read dozens of books to keep us current with trends; talk for hours with our closest ---- but we are preoccupied. The Goldberg Variations -- among other things -- shoves that ignored truth plainly in your face.
Beautifully written and complexly conceived -- here's the premise: lady of apparently excessive means holds a harpsichord concert in her bedchamber, playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (of which, apparently, there are 30). She invites 30 people -- one per variation -- who have played roles in her life or that of her husband, an intellectual who suffered a mental break. 30 vignettes capture a five-page flash of thought in each audience member's mind, slowly intertwining to give an incomplete, highly subjective picture of what's actually going on that night.
This is the kind of style experiment that could MISERABLY fail -- but it doesn't. There are some missteps (and it's very bohemian-Parisian -- half the people there have fucked either the husband or wife or both), but overall, it's cohesive and engaging. Huston uses voice effectively, though a few characters are interchangeable -- and her sentences, when appropriate to the character, are gorgeous. She's clearly a stylist, a poet; that's why this works.
I mean, it also works because it's so fucking relatable. Half the people sitting in the audience don't want to be there, and it's glaringly obvious, and oh god haven't we all been there? -- but more than that, the actual internal monologues of several characters just strike right on home. Almost everyone present is a wealthy musician or intellectual, but all of them are insecure as shit and assuming everyone else is not. Everyone is full of doubts, fears, desires; in the privacy of their own minds, they let too much slip. It's not an original exercize in perspective, but it's a good one, and it doesn't come off gimmicky at all.
Having read this right after Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, I've got a lot of feelings about background characters at the moment -- about people we see cursorily, assuming they think nothing of us, not realizing we have ruined their day or changed their lives.
As the best fiction is: this is a bit terrifying.
Enjoy it.
Interested, diverted, intrigued, focused -- but transfixed, to the point where all else fades and our attention rests exclusively -- no, not often at all. We may spend hundreds of dollars on a night of entertainment; read dozens of books to keep us current with trends; talk for hours with our closest ---- but we are preoccupied. The Goldberg Variations -- among other things -- shoves that ignored truth plainly in your face.
Beautifully written and complexly conceived -- here's the premise: lady of apparently excessive means holds a harpsichord concert in her bedchamber, playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (of which, apparently, there are 30). She invites 30 people -- one per variation -- who have played roles in her life or that of her husband, an intellectual who suffered a mental break. 30 vignettes capture a five-page flash of thought in each audience member's mind, slowly intertwining to give an incomplete, highly subjective picture of what's actually going on that night.
This is the kind of style experiment that could MISERABLY fail -- but it doesn't. There are some missteps (and it's very bohemian-Parisian -- half the people there have fucked either the husband or wife or both), but overall, it's cohesive and engaging. Huston uses voice effectively, though a few characters are interchangeable -- and her sentences, when appropriate to the character, are gorgeous. She's clearly a stylist, a poet; that's why this works.
I mean, it also works because it's so fucking relatable. Half the people sitting in the audience don't want to be there, and it's glaringly obvious, and oh god haven't we all been there? -- but more than that, the actual internal monologues of several characters just strike right on home. Almost everyone present is a wealthy musician or intellectual, but all of them are insecure as shit and assuming everyone else is not. Everyone is full of doubts, fears, desires; in the privacy of their own minds, they let too much slip. It's not an original exercize in perspective, but it's a good one, and it doesn't come off gimmicky at all.
Having read this right after Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, I've got a lot of feelings about background characters at the moment -- about people we see cursorily, assuming they think nothing of us, not realizing we have ruined their day or changed their lives.
As the best fiction is: this is a bit terrifying.
Enjoy it.
August 9, 2024
Il faut que je loue ce roman de Nancy Huston, et non pas seulement parce que je suis un anglophone pareil qu'elle. Pour son premier roman en français, c'est tellement beau esthétiquement. J'appréciais beaucoup des références qu'elle en avait faites.
February 23, 2025
I definitely purchased this book because of the title, as Bach's Goldberg Variations is a favourite piece and one of the first pieces of classical music I truly loved, specifically Glenn Gould's 1981 recording. A friend of my mom's gave her the album when it first came out and I remember him over for coffee going on and on about how brilliant it was and the history of the piece and the recording. We had only the vinyl album and one record player, so listening was very rare. A few years later I bought the cassette tape version, later the CD, then a downloaded pirate version and now a purchased version. Clearly a favourite, it is heard often in my headphones, a recording so clear that you can hear Gould muttering and humming. So when I saw the book title, I had to have it, too.
I started reading it several years ago, but did not finish it then. I don't know why I didn't finish it, but since I remembered little about it and there were no bookmarks, I started from the beginning. Good thing as, like the eponymous music, it needs to be read start to finish. The "story" is set in the Paris apartment (specifically the bedroom) of Liliane Kulainn, a harpsichordist who has invited 30 people to her performance of the Variations. The novel follows the 30 Variations as 30 chapters, with each giving the brief inner monologue of one of the guests. The result is an interesting if somewhat disjointed look at Liliane from the perspective of her guests. While not every knows her directly, their thoughts and loose relationships provide an incomplete but complex picture of the musician. It reads very well in English, likely because the author herself does the translation (and English is her first language); in fact, I didn't know it was a translation until researching it for this review. It has a somewhat funereal feel, although it's just a summer evening of music.
The book was published in 1981 and specifically references Gould's recording so Huston must have been referring to Gould's 1955 recording, which is much faster and more frenetic than the 1981. Regardless, I do wonder if the publication was at all timed to coincide with the 1981 recording.
I had hoped that each story would reflect the tone and tempo of each variation, but that would likely be too much of a trick, and indeed there is no clear relationship between them. For example, Variation XIV, an upbeat and perky piece, is paired in the novel with the chapter "Tumour", in which Olga, dying of cancer, considers her past with anger and regret and plans for no compromises or prevarications in her limited future; perhaps within the perkiness is a bit of defiance? The flow of the chapters follows a literary pace and connection rather than a musical one. Regardless, it was an enjoyable read.
I started reading it several years ago, but did not finish it then. I don't know why I didn't finish it, but since I remembered little about it and there were no bookmarks, I started from the beginning. Good thing as, like the eponymous music, it needs to be read start to finish. The "story" is set in the Paris apartment (specifically the bedroom) of Liliane Kulainn, a harpsichordist who has invited 30 people to her performance of the Variations. The novel follows the 30 Variations as 30 chapters, with each giving the brief inner monologue of one of the guests. The result is an interesting if somewhat disjointed look at Liliane from the perspective of her guests. While not every knows her directly, their thoughts and loose relationships provide an incomplete but complex picture of the musician. It reads very well in English, likely because the author herself does the translation (and English is her first language); in fact, I didn't know it was a translation until researching it for this review. It has a somewhat funereal feel, although it's just a summer evening of music.
The book was published in 1981 and specifically references Gould's recording so Huston must have been referring to Gould's 1955 recording, which is much faster and more frenetic than the 1981. Regardless, I do wonder if the publication was at all timed to coincide with the 1981 recording.
I had hoped that each story would reflect the tone and tempo of each variation, but that would likely be too much of a trick, and indeed there is no clear relationship between them. For example, Variation XIV, an upbeat and perky piece, is paired in the novel with the chapter "Tumour", in which Olga, dying of cancer, considers her past with anger and regret and plans for no compromises or prevarications in her limited future; perhaps within the perkiness is a bit of defiance? The flow of the chapters follows a literary pace and connection rather than a musical one. Regardless, it was an enjoyable read.
February 15, 2023
Ce livre est la représentation littéraire d’un concert de musique classique, vu des différents points de vue. L’intrigue porte sur Les Variations Goldberg de Bach. Liliane est le personnage principal et le fil conducteur du récit, celle qui a invité une trentaine d’amis chez soi et pour lesquels elle joue au clavecin l’œuvre mentionné. Parmi eux, il y a sa tourneuse de page, son mari, son père, des musiciens, des journalistes, des étudiants, etc. Les arias d’ouverture et de fermeture sont narrés par Liliane elle-même, tandis que les trente autres variations sont narrés par ses invités, chacun une variation et, dans le procès, on apprend des choses sur eux, ainsi que leurs impressions sur le concert. Les réactions des gens sont très distinctes. C’était une bonne lecture, très différente de tout ce que j’ai lu auparavant.
August 14, 2025
La forme du roman de ce roman est créative, amusante, unique, à l’image de la pièce musicale d’où vient son titre. Comme un jeu ou une énigme. Nancy Huston continue à impressionner.
January 4, 2026
J’ai adoré la multiplicité des points de vue, toutes ces voix qui se croisent et s’entremêlent pour porter celle toujours magnifique de Nancy Huston.
June 18, 2016
Five-Finger Exercise
Though a Canadian anglophone, Nancy Huston spent a year in Paris in 1973 on a junior year abroad from Sarah Lawrence, fell in love with the language, and has basically been living in Paris and writing in French most of her adult life. She translates her own books into English. I mention this, even though I read The Goldberg Variations (1981) in English, because it is the kind of first novel one could only imagine being published in France. Consciously elegant, artful in its arrangement, restrained in length, it shows the young author punching her ticket in her bid to be taken seriously as a French intellectual—albeit an intellectual with the common touch, who uses vulgarity as one of her elements. One can see why the book won the Prix Contrepoint (a most appropriate-sounding prize, given the subject matter). Yet one can also give thanks that Huston's more recent novels (I have read Fault Lines, Infrared, and Black Dance ), though equally skillful, are no longer being used by the author to show off.
The premise: a French-Irish harpsichordist, Liliane Kulainn, invites thirty people to her obviously ample Paris bedroom to hear her play the Bach Goldberg Variations. She begins and ends the book with the theme—her own meditations. Each of the variations is the interior monologue of one of her guests: people she loves or has loved, or others connected to her second husband, Bernald Thorer, a celebrated public intellectual who has mysteriously given up public life. Here she is in her summing-up—or maybe it's the novelist speaking through the musician:
So all in all, a fascinating experiment, but one that leaves me rather cold, whether as a musician or a reader interested in the inner lives of human beings.
Though a Canadian anglophone, Nancy Huston spent a year in Paris in 1973 on a junior year abroad from Sarah Lawrence, fell in love with the language, and has basically been living in Paris and writing in French most of her adult life. She translates her own books into English. I mention this, even though I read The Goldberg Variations (1981) in English, because it is the kind of first novel one could only imagine being published in France. Consciously elegant, artful in its arrangement, restrained in length, it shows the young author punching her ticket in her bid to be taken seriously as a French intellectual—albeit an intellectual with the common touch, who uses vulgarity as one of her elements. One can see why the book won the Prix Contrepoint (a most appropriate-sounding prize, given the subject matter). Yet one can also give thanks that Huston's more recent novels (I have read Fault Lines, Infrared, and Black Dance ), though equally skillful, are no longer being used by the author to show off.
The premise: a French-Irish harpsichordist, Liliane Kulainn, invites thirty people to her obviously ample Paris bedroom to hear her play the Bach Goldberg Variations. She begins and ends the book with the theme—her own meditations. Each of the variations is the interior monologue of one of her guests: people she loves or has loved, or others connected to her second husband, Bernald Thorer, a celebrated public intellectual who has mysteriously given up public life. Here she is in her summing-up—or maybe it's the novelist speaking through the musician:
It's true that all of this was imagined by me. But there's no such thing as a me that's only me. I'm the one who composed every single variation. Using the notes of Bach. Using the people in this room. All in my head. I'm sure I got a few things wrong. In fact, my ideas were pretty vague when I set out. I wasn't even sure who knew whom, what had happened first, and what came later, how the different events would intertwine....Her self-analysis shows the strengths and weaknesses of this little novel. The individual monologues are good, and they span a huge gamut: trivia, petty jealousies, thoughts of sex in every possible flavor, philosophical comment, and the occasional musical analysis. I could have done with more of the latter; there is none of the intrinsic connection with the music of each variation that Richard Powers achieved with his later (and far more ambitious) The Gold Bug Variations. I also have to say that the chain of monologues is an inherently limiting form, lacking dialogue or any interaction between the people in the course of the novel itself. I do admire Huston for her attempts to draw connections between the figures, and over time we do pick up many scraps of back story. But thirty-one is a large cast, and you would really need to be keeping written notes to follow all the interconnections between characters.
So all in all, a fascinating experiment, but one that leaves me rather cold, whether as a musician or a reader interested in the inner lives of human beings.
February 3, 2021
« Faut surtout pas que la musique soit autre chose que de la carcasse. Autre chose que ce qu’on connaît déjà : pipi-caca-dodo. Pipi à l’heure caca à l’heure dodo à l’heure musique à l’heure. Lève-toi, couche-toi, mange-ta-soupe, écris-ta-musique, et fais-un-enfant-à-ta-femme. Gagne ta vie. Tue ton temps. Un, deux, trois. Un, deux, trois. Johann Strauss. Tourne en rond. Tourne en ronde. Tourne en rond - ».
April 1, 2008
so, so interesting.
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December 31, 2014Ce kaléidoscope à plusieurs personnages ne m'a pas laissé de souvenirs.
January 6, 2024
Huston mirrors the structure of Bach's Goldberg Variations by entering in each chapter the thoughts of 30 people attending a concert where the Variations are played. An intriguing tour-de-force.
February 21, 2008
Brilliant characterizations applied to a musical piece. LOVED.
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September 23, 2017Pas de review ou rating tant que je l'aurais pas étudié en cours (de littérature comparée dans le cadre de la L2 de Lettres Modernes.)
Par contre je tiens à préciser aux gens intéressés que ce roman aurait besoin d'une bonne dizaine de TW. Certains passages sont assez choquants, d'autres top au point de me faire prendre en photo les pages.
Par contre je tiens à préciser aux gens intéressés que ce roman aurait besoin d'une bonne dizaine de TW. Certains passages sont assez choquants, d'autres top au point de me faire prendre en photo les pages.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews