Sight Reading
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Compulsively readable, memorable, and wise.” — Nancy Richler, author of the Giller Prize Finalist The Imposter Bride
On a Boston street one warm spring day, Hazel and Remy spot each other for the first time in years. Although their brief meeting may seem insignificant, behind them lie two decades in which their life paths have crisscrossed, diverged and ultimately interlaced. Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to the composer Nicholas Elko—once the love of Hazel’s life.
It has been twenty years since Remy, an ambitious conservatory student; Nicholas, a wunderkind launching an international career; and his wife, the beautiful and fragile Hazel, first came together, tipping their collective world on its axis. As their story unfolds, and they find themselves linked anew by a final secret, each discovers the surprising ways in which the quest to create something real and true—be it a work of art or one’s own life—can lead to the most personal of revelations.
Lyrical and evocative, Sight Reading explores mysteries of intuition and perception while unspooling a transporting story of marriage, family and the secrets we keep, even from ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her second novel (after Russian Winter), Kalotay returns again to a rarified artistic world where the pursuit of art and beauty clashes with the less noble realities of human interaction. Beautiful Hazel and her talented husband Nicholas Elko are itinerant newlyweds, following his composing career across Europe with their small daughter, when they alight in Boston for a guest conductorship at the conservatory there. But it's not just another stop on the world tour that's continually burnished Nicholas's renown; that the couple's stay in Boston will change the course of their lives. Remy, a second violin with frizzled hair and untrammeled desires, is drawn in by the conductor's magnetism. Nicholas doesn't fight the attraction, and soon leaves Hazel to marry the younger, less beautiful woman. The story follows this triangle from 1987 to 2007 through the insular world of classical music in Boston. Their ties complicate and enrich each character's life, raising questions about the price of beauty, the power of art, and the shifting nature of identity. While the story eventually loses steam, Kalotay writes elegantly and ably about music and emotion, drafting a moving meditation on the sacrifices made for art and the mysteries of the heart.
