Partita
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 6 Oct 2026
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- 195,00 kr
Publisher Description
The 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.
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 experiences 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, life-changing power of art.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A gifted pianist looks back on her life in Barbara Kingsolver’s deeply moving novel about music and memory. Livia Cable has spent decades in rural Tennessee, far from the concert career she’d imagined as a young conservatory student. Then Sigurd, an old lover who knew her before everything changed, calls out of the blue and asks to see her. Moving between Livia’s youth and the present, Kingsolver gradually reveals the losses that reshaped her life, including the devastating end of her musical ambitions. Music runs through every page, from Livia’s memories of performing Ravel and Chopin to the piano students she now teaches, but you don’t need to know classical composers to feel what it means to her. Kingsolver cleverly structures Livia’s memories like the movements of a musical composition, allowing old experiences to take on new meaning when heard in concert with one another. Partita is tender, wise, and beautifully observed, finding unexpected harmony in a life that didn’t turn out as planned.
