Chamber Music

Doris Grumbach is a respected journalist, teacher, and author of novels, memoirs and biography, whose fiction is not that well known despite critical acclaim. CHAMBER MUSIC, like most of her other novels, is in the genre of historical fiction. Using real people from the past as her jumping-off point, Grumbach creates novels of uncommon dignity, detail, subtlety and pathos. CHAMBER MUSIC is loosely based upon the lives of American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian. Grumbach incorporates real events into the plot, such as Marian's founding of the MacDowell Artists Colony. Edward died in 1908, and Marian in 1956. What was Marian's life like prior to, during, and following Edward's death? CHAMBER MUSIC imagines the answers to these questions by having Marian's fictionalized counterpart tell the story. Without giving away the plot, which is well worth discovering as you read, I will say that Grumbach has drawn a very sad and realistic portrayal of a couple trapped in a marriage of convenience and the toll it takes on them both, especially the wife, due to her lack of options at the time. One of Grumbach's great strengths is her ability to illustrate underlying political realities in a way that focuses on plot and characters, rather than ideology. Her message, such as it is, is woven into the story and never feels didactic. In this manner, she brings to life the reason why politics matters in the first place. In CHAMBER MUSIC, Grumbach tackles the issue of homosexuality in turn-of-the-20th-century America, when people were forced to hide their sexual preferences as a matter of life and death. CHAMBER MUSIC illustrates concretely how "being in the closet" destroyed peoples' lives. However, there is another, more universal message in CHAMBER MUSIC: the healing power of love, which can come unbidden and in unexpected forms, if we are open to receiving it. This is a heartbreaking gem of a book, and one of my very favorites.