Piano Music for Four Hands - Hardcover

Grenier, Roger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803221819 ISBN 13: 9780803221819

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2001

Synopsis

Piano Music for Four Hands is a novel about music and love set against three generations of French history. At its center is a charming but melancholy pianist named Michel Mailhoc. Having survived a series of bungled love affairs and professional disappointments, he retreats to his family house in the Pyrenees. The bright spot in his life is his grandniece Emma, who becomes his prizewinning student. Struggling with his fervent desire for her success and the fear of losing her, Michel sends Emma into the world of international musical stardom that he has renounced for himself. The Mailhoc family saga, stretching from World War I to the turbulent 1960s, is full of sorrow, but the underlying melody remains tender and humorous. From the first sentence we feel curiously at home in Roger Grenier's intimate, precise, and musical writing.

About this title

About the Author

Roger Grenier is the author of over thirty books of fiction and criticism, including Another November (Nebraska 1998) and The Difficulty of Being a Dog. He is known for his spare language and melancholy wit and for decades has been a key figure in French letters. Alice Kaplan is a professor of Romance studies and literature at Duke University and the author, most recently, of The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach.

Reviews

Piano for Four Hands, a slim fiction by novelist and critic Roger Grenier, tells the story of aging, melancholy pianist Michel Mailhoc, who disdains worldly pleasures after a series of failed love affairs, and retreats to his family home in the Pyrenees. His only delight is his grand-niece, Emma, whom he trains to reap the accolades he scorned. Translated from the French by Alice Kaplan, a superb writer in her own right, the novel blossoms into delicate life, chronicling the illusions and disillusions of an existence devoted to art.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Grenier, the author of over 30 books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Difficulty of Being a Dog (LJ 12/00), has spun a melancholy tale that captures the pathos of music but not its grandeur. Michel Mailhoc, descendant of the scorned Cagots (once treated as "untouchables") of southwestern France, is a talented pianist who studies as a child with the flamboyant and celebrated Nicolau Arderiu and then imitates his mentor by engaging in a trail of listless affairs and eventually withdrawing from the stage. He ends up teaching his grand-niece Emma, who goes on to become a famed concert pianist, though her success brings some pain for them both she is almost undone by stage fright, and he is saddened whenever she departs on tour. "Has his art of the piano been nothing but an instrument of seduction," muses Michel at one point, and the answer, alas, seems to be yes. Grenier writes in a dry, autumnal style that breathes the hopelessness of aborted love but not the passion that a single fine phrase of Beethoven can inspire. For comprehensive collections of French literature. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When he is a child, Michel Mailhoc's mother tells him that their family is descended from social outcasts in southwestern France. This unusual heritage instills in him a sense of estrangement, which is one of this book's two themes, the other one music. Michel spends most of his life in Pau, where he becomes the protege of the brilliant Catalan pianist, Nicolau Arderiu. After Arderiu perishes in a Nazi death camp, Michel marries his young widow. In the ensuing years the marriage dissolves, and Michel drifts along making a living at various points as a music teacher and a performer in a piano bar. And he has affairs. His one real achievement and engagement ultimately come in the form of his grandniece Emma, who is five years old when she begins to visit him for piano lessons. Emma turns out to be prodigiously talented, and Michel helps her launch the brilliant career that might have been his if he had not "closed himself off in his province." This refined, reflective novel is by a noted French writer. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803221819
• ISBN 13: 9780803221819
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 153