Clara
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'A gripping narrative - a deeply moving study of love, loss and solitude' Independent on Sunday
Celebrated nineteenth-century concert pianist and composer, editor and teacher, friend of Brahms - Clara Schumann was also the wife of Robert Schumann, the mother of his eight children, and the woman who cared for him through a series of crippling mental illnesses.
A lyrical and vibrant account of two remarkable and highly dramatic musical careers, Clara is a novel about timeless, common things: about the inescapable influences of childhood, about creativity and marital life, about communication and silence, about how art is made and how art, in turn, may erode or save the life that nourishes it.
'Some of the greatest words ever written on thwarted love since Romeo and Juliet' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Renowned in her own lifetime as a brilliant pianist, Clara Wieck Schumann is today less well known than her famous composer husband, Robert Schumann. By the time readers reach the end of talented Scottish writer Galloway's (Blood, etc.) tour de force, they will feel intimate with and sympathetic to both tormented musical geniuses. Galloway uses stream of consciousness and often achieves transcendence. The prose explodes with urgency: terse observations alternate with poetic descriptions and artful games while shifting typefaces heighten the energy. The book is most masterful in the early chapters, devoted to Clara's rise as musical prodigy under the ferocious tutelage of her father, Friedrich Wieck. By the time she circumvents Wieck to marry Robert Schumann, who has loved her since she was 12, the reader may feel exhausted. But perhaps this is Galloway's intent, for Robert is exhausting in the tragic manner of madmen who seem to be many people at the same time. Clara's sturdiness is almost as remarkable as her talent as a pianist and composer; her pregnancies were many and hard (eight children survived); ministering to her husband's mercurial moods, inspiring his creativity and furthering his career required unparalleled devotion. Galloway's research is evident in these details, which are sometimes too minute but contribute to the starkly authentic atmosphere. She also conveys the ways in which Clara's own creativity continued despite her husband's madness and ultimate breakdown. The musical background is equally rich. Musical giants walked the earth in the Schumanns' 19th-century Germany, and Mendelssohn, Brahms, Liszt and Chopin make a compelling chorus in this operatic drama. . Booksellers will want to target that audience, but this novel will also appeal to discriminating readers of literary fiction.
