An Unfinished Score

If one reads AN UNFINISHED SCORE by Elise Blackwell whilst listening to the music referenced - minimally, "Black Angels," by Crumb, and "Harold In Italy," by Berlioz - one can feel the plot lines being woven into the bent and beautiful rehearsals of an extraordinary quartet: Suzanne [solo viola], her husband Ben [cello], her best friend and her best friend's deaf daughter [the violins against whom the other instruments find their voices]. This book is a finely orchestrated masterpiece ... layered nuances against an incomparable story. As in the best of performances, not one sour note ... not one wasted word. Bellissima!

Like the love affair between concert violist Suzanne and famous conductor Alex, this book is also "saturated with music." Perhaps, as some famous musician once said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" - can it be done? I'm not a musician but after reading An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell, it appears that writing about music in the context of love, pain, regret, jealousy, and joy can be done superbly. Blackwell's prose made me hear music in my head as I read this story. Do you have to be a classical music nut to enjoy it? I don't think so. For one thing, I know very little about classical music and its history. Most of the characters are professional musicians and so much of the dialogue is about music and composers; it didn't matter that I understand all the references because the underlying subtext, which Blackwell illustrates for us beautifully, transcends them. Although, there were some moments where I winced - as when the professional musicians had collective derision for Vivaldi, whose works I happen to love! In fact, the story made me want to seek out the composers and pieces mentioned by the musician characters. As soon as I turned the last page (not any sooner because I just had to read on to find out what happened), I got on youtube and started listening to some performances. Which leads me to my next tip: if you decide to read this book - do so with a playlist of some of the works mentioned. Had I done so, it would have enriched my reading experience. The most exciting part was when Blackwell got to the titular "Unfinished Score" which the conductor's widow manipulates Suzanne into finishing. Once this entered the story - I could not put the book down. The act of composing and interpreting music was fascinating and where it leads Suzanne was unexpected. "...painstakingly though sometimes with bright flashes of insight, Suzanne tries to decipher Alex's intentions in the black marks on paper. She tries to discern which sections are joyous and which written out of pain, which reflect desire and which satsfaction. If she can put them all tgether she thinks---get each segment right and play the piece through---then she will have Alex's narrative of their love affair to twine with her own. Then maybe the story will become whole, the larger sum of her memory fragments, the parts of the story she failed to understand. Through Alex's music, she will know what happened to her." There is much more to the mystery of this unfinished score and the manipulative widow, who is drawn with a hint of evil under a mask of perfection. Blackwell's characterization could have leaned toward a more human one; in a story this complex, did she really have to be the evil wife? I think the widow could have had a bit more sympathy as being the technically wronged party. I thought the same about Suzanne's husband; he didn't seem as fully fleshed out as some of the other minor characters. But, on the other hand, An Unfinished Score is t

Elise Blackwell is a constant source of surprises, changing directions with each engrossing new novel, and never repeating her subject matter or her approach to writing. In this, her fourth novel, Blackwell moves in yet another direction, studying the lives of people totally committed to the world of classical music-players in a string ensemble, a conductor, and a composer-and the often difficult personal choices they make. Though her subject matter has been very different in her four novels, her work has become increasingly complex and challenging, with this novel the most layered and intricate of all. Suzanne Sullivan, a viola soloist, is listening to the radio one morning when she learns of a plane crash in Indiana. Alex Elling, her conductor-lover of the past four years, is dead. Suzanne, long unsatisfied with her marriage to Ben, an avant-garde composer, is nevertheless still living with him, and they share a house with Petra, Suzanne's best friend, and Petra's daughter--the only way the three musicians can afford a house in Princeton, New Jersey, where Suzanne and Petra are part of a string quartet. As Suzanne tries to come to terms with Alex's death, she goes about her daily life, but the novel veers widely from straight narrative, moving back and forth in time as Suzanne recollects people, places, and events in her relationship with Alex Elling, Ben, and Petra. Gradually, the complex lives of all the main characters unfold, their relationships with each other, both personally and professionally colored by their commitments to music. When Alex's wife Olivia sends Suzanne the viola solo from an unfinished concerto Alex has been writing--the only composition he has ever written--Olivia tells her that he wrote the concerto with Suzanne in mind. She will tell all about the affair unless Suzanne learns the almost impossibly difficult solo and finishes orchestrating the concerto so that it can be performed in Alex's honor. Blackwell keeps the novel moving on many levels at once, incorporating stories about composers, about the technical details of instruments and their bows, and about the difficulties of the performing life, especially for female viola players (who are extremely rare). She has obviously done her homework, also including technical information about the financing and promotion of orchestras, issues of copyrights, and the sensitivities of unions. She models the structure of the novel itself on a concerto, matching the content to the moods of Doloroso, Agitato, and Appassionato movements, as the novel becomes more complex and increasingly dramatic. Motifs and echoes in the three movements of a concerto are paralleled here by foreshadowing in the plot structure, and as the novel moves toward a grand climax, the reader has been so well-prepared that the climax becomes a natural resolution rather than a huge surprise. Parts of the plot and some of the characters' actions are unrealistic, however---melodramatic, even--a

While preparing dinner, concert violist Suzanne Sullivan hears on the radio that her long-term lover Alex--a well-known conductor--has perished in a plane crash. Living with her husband (a composer), her best friend Petra (a concert violinist) and Petra's deaf daughter Adele, Suzanne is forced to grieve in secret. With one foot in a dysfunctional marriage and one hand in the rearing of a child not her own, she comes to realize that it was during her stolen moments with Alex that she felt most whole. But as the story's three movements unfold, Suzanne learns that her affair was not as secret as she believed it to be. Enter Olivia, the dead conductor's widow, who weaves a scheme of revenge and blackmail which Suzanne must compose, arrange, and conduct her way out of. Elise Blackwell's novels have always asked big questions. Her characters often find a wedge driven between their lives and their lives' work. Her fans will recognize that literary cleaver in the new book, but will see it cut closer to home. This is perhaps Blackwell's most contemporary novel, as well as her most domestic. The balances of legacy against happiness, of friendship against competition, of love against marriage even, are struck at the household level, within this original vision of a 21st century family unit. Classical musicians--at work and at home--are the perfect target for Blackwell's prose. That dismissive and unattributed cliché of "dancing about architecture" does not apply here. This book is not so much about music as about life with music--its purpose, its redemptive power, and its limits. Art, family, and personal well-being all make conflicting claims upon Suzanne's life--a life that feels tragically incapable of holding all that wants to be part of it. This is also Blackwell's most accessible and fast-paced novel thus far. Starting with the plane crash on Page One, the surprises and reversals-of-fortune are relentless. An exploration of talent and relationships that's as page-turning as a detective story, the plot is pitch-perfect and taut as an E string. Give this novel to the grandparent who once played piano, or to the dreadlocked nephew who wants to start a band. It will strike a chord with both of them, and it will resonate for days.

Couching her tale in the language of classical music, Blackwell once again exhibits her deep understanding of human nature. A concert violist, Suzanne has made a peace of sorts with her life choices, in marriage to Ben and relationship with Petra, her best friend. Ben's approach to music is more abstract and dispassionate, shielding his emotional barometer, extracting insights like a magician. He prefers the listener have "a distilled experience, something pure". Whatever the deficiencies in her marriage, they are blunted by a love affair of four years with conductor Alex Elling. Until the night she learns that Alex has perished in a plane crash. In that moment, Suzanne is left to imagine a world without Alex. Suzanne's domestic situation is not traditional, subtly altered since a miscarriage and the decision to purchase a home with Petra, whose daughter, Adele, is deaf. This unusual family configuration allows the author to manipulate her characters, to balance the tensions between them and the demands of career and lifestyle, always precarious. But everything changes once again when Suzanne receives a phone call from Alex's widow, Olivia, demanding Suzanne complete the score for Alex's unfinished concerto. This is dangerous territory indeed, Olivia's motives suspect, but the task irresistible to Suzanne, who senses a reprieve to her grief, an opportunity to exists for a while in Alex's mind. On this treacherous landscape, Suzanne will come face to face with realities she has thus far ignored, her ambitions, expectations and dreams for the future. As intricate and syncopated as the music that flows through every facet of these characters' lives, Blackwell marries music to passion, interpreting actions as deftly as the haunting notes of a symphony. Although those without knowledge of classical music may miss some nuances of the novel, her vivid characterizations are undeniable, if not always attractive, human failures as familiar as they are painful. This is a world where all reside, where love, betrayal, jealousy and fear are part of the fabric of life- and where forgiveness dwells. Luan Gaines/2010.